The Ghost at the Point Read online

  “Jacky!” she called out. “Is that you?”

  The round face tilted up, caught sight of her and broke into a huge smile. He nodded and tapped his chest. “That’s me!”

  Dorrie laughed with relief. “What are you doing here?”

  Jacky puffed up importantly. “Dad says are you all right? And grandpa – he all right?”

  “Yes, thanks – my grandpa’s broken his leg. Got to stay in hospital for a while.”

  Dorrie wondered how the Pearces knew she’d come home. Then she realised that it would never occur to them that she wouldn’t come home, or that she might not be able to cope on her own. In Caleb Pearce’s eyes, twelve would be practically grown-up.

  “Got some fish.” Jacky gestured back over his shoulder. “For you – in the dinghy.”

  “Oh!” Out of the blue, Dorrie felt tears pricking in her eyes. “Thank you.” Then another thought struck her. “Did you row all the way down the beach – on your own?”

  Jacky beamed again. “Corker big row!”

  “Haven’t you got an outboard?”

  “Nup – Dad says we got no money to get one.”

  Having to row to their fishing spots must take up a lot of time, she thought, even though they probably did most of their fishing on the lagoon.

  The two of them headed around to the back beach, Dorrie along the top of the cliff, Jacky around the rocks below. He called up to her about things he discovered along the way – a big starfish, a scuttling crab, a slippery rock.

  The yellow dinghy was pulled up a little way into a bank of seaweed, a soggy, newspaper-wrapped parcel sitting on the seat. Dorrie had a quick peek inside.

  “Whiting fillets. Thanks, Jacky.”

  “Big fish.” Jacky jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Caught ’em meself!”

  “Better get them in the fridge, I s’pose.” She touched his arm. “Would you like to come up and have a drink of water, or a cuppa?”

  Jacky shook his head. “Nup. Dad said to come straight back and not to make a nuisance of meself.”

  “You’re not a nuisance.” At that moment Dorrie was very glad of his cheerful company. “Aren’t you thirsty after that big row?”

  But Jacky was starting to push the dinghy back into the water. Then he remembered something. “Hey,” he said, “saw your friend.”

  Dorrie’s breath caught. “What … friend?”

  “That boy.” Jacky pointed to somewhere behind her. “Up there, in the bushes.”

  Dorrie swung around, staring at the hillside, the tin roof of the thunderbox barely visible above the scrub. And further up, bits of the house, peeping through the tea-trees.

  She swung back to Jacky. “W-what boy? Where, exactly?”

  Jacky shrugged, indicating vaguely in the general direction of the path that led up from the beach. “He was playing hide-and-seek. He saw me, then he ducked down behind the bush.” Jacky bobbed up and down. “Like that. Ow,” he added, “you’re hurting me.”

  Dorrie, realising she’d grabbed his arm, hard, let go.

  “What did he look like? Did he have brown hair?”

  “Yair – darker than yours. And a brown face.” Jacky was clearly becoming a little impatient with this line of questioning. “You know – the boy! When we lifted up your grandpa.” He smiled again. “He was playing hide-and-seek then too.”

  Dorrie was speechless. She recalled Jacky yesterday evening, waving at something or someone in the scrub. That your friend?

  The “friend” she’d seen at the front gate. And Caleb’s remark: He’d make friends with a shadow. Did ghosts only appear to some people? To her and Jacky, for example?

  And Gah. She’d been deliberately blocking it from her mind, but now she was forced to think about the “kind” person who’d given him a drink. And then tossed the rest of it out, onto the ground.

  She remembered Aunt Gertrude talking about poltergeists. Ghosts who did mischief – moving or knocking over objects, even taking things. Maybe like left over fish. But was there such a thing as a good, helpful poltergeist?

  One thing was for sure. This boy had appeared to both her and Jacky, and probably to Gah. So there could only be two explanations. Either he was a ghost, or …

  Jacky was tugging at the dinghy again. Dorrie grabbed hold of it, her heart racing.

  “Wait, Jacky,” she cried. “Stop!”

  He looked at her in surprise.

  “Before you go …” She stopped and took a breath, willing herself to calm down. “Before you go, could you just spend a little while helping me find him?”

  Jacky’s eyes widened.

  “Our friend – the boy – playing hide-and-seek. Let’s see if we can catch him.”

  Even as they started searching, she knew it was a crazy idea. Ghost or not, this boy was not going to let himself be found by two idiots crashing about in the scrub.

  On Dorrie’s instructions they fanned out, taking different routes up to the house. Jacky got right into the spirit of it.

  “Here, boy!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Where are you, boy?”

  In spite of herself, Dorrie got the giggles. Any self-respecting ghost would be scared off forever by that racket.

  When they finally met on the front verandah, Jacky pushed back his hat and scratched his head.

  “Reckon he’s scared of us, that boy.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Hey, boy! Don’t be scared of us – we’re good people.”

  They both laughed.

  “Dorrie and Jacky – corker good people,” he added. Then, as Poppy twined herself purring around his legs: “Cat good too!”

  They went to the kitchen and Dorrie put the fish in the fridge. She hadn’t lit the stove that morning so they couldn’t boil the kettle for tea, but they had drinks of water and some bread and jam. Jacky ate a couple of slices, which set Dorrie wondering what she’d do when the loaf and other food supplies were finished. Even though she knew Mr Buntle at the store would give her credit (there were only a few coins in the money jar), she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by arriving there in the truck, all alone.

  “Well,” announced Jacky finally, pushing out his chair and standing up, “I’m going home now.”

  Dorrie felt a little rush of panic. “But we haven’t searched the house yet. Hey, Jacky – what say we check all the rooms?”

  Jacky’s face brightened. “Righto.”

  And so they did, starting with the two bedrooms off the courtyard, and then back through the house and into the bathroom and the bedrooms on the verandah. They looked behind the doors and the curtained hanging spaces and under the beds, but all they found were dust balls, a shrivelled-up mouse and several spiders, dead and alive.

  “That boy’s not here,” pronounced Jacky solemnly, after they’d finished searching the last room – Gah’s. “He’ll be back, I reckon.”

  Dorrie bit her lip, her insides tightening again.

  “I’m goin’ now. Dad’ll get cranky.”

  “Oh, all right.” She swallowed. “I’ll come and say goodbye.”

  She followed him down the narrow path back to the beach, Poppy trailing behind her. Jacky, as usual, kept up a stream of chatter.

  They pushed the dinghy into the water and he hopped in, fitting the oars into their rowlocks. He lifted his hat, smiling. “Ta-ta, Dorrie. I’ll come and visit you again.”

  “Yes, please, Jacky – come again soon.” Dorrie picked up Poppy and held her tight. She felt like jumping in the boat and going back with him, shack or no shack at the other end.

  Jacky rowed out to the dark blue line of seaweed, oars squeaking, then swung the bow towards home. He waved again.

  “Bye, Dorrie! Bye, Cat!”

  Dorrie laughed and waved Poppy’s paw.

  “Bye, Jacky.”

  Still holding Poppy, she stood there until he was just a small figure down the water. Really, she thought, it would almost have been quicker for him to have walked.

  S
he put Poppy down and trudged back across the sand, a feeling of dread settling over her again. Poppy, suddenly frisky, shot past her and up the path.

  Dorrie followed, wondering what to do for the rest of the day. Going into Gah’s room had made her realise that he’d probably be needing some of his things in hospital – pyjamas and toothbrush, for example, and some of his beloved books. She wondered whether she could risk driving in with them. She was dying to give him a hug, see how he was. But Aunt Janet and Uncle Harold might have chosen that very time to visit him too.

  She was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she didn’t hear the low growling until she rounded a bend and almost walked right into them. Poppy, crouched, was eyeballing an enormous tiger snake, which was half-reared, poised to strike at her.

  Dorrie went rigid. Any sudden movement would, she knew, make it lash out.

  “Poppy,” she warned, her voice urgent. “No, Poppy, stay still.”

  Fat lot of good that did. Poppy’s eyes smouldered; her growling rose to a crescendo. The snake’s head lifted a fraction; its eyes glittered. Any second, unless Poppy was faster, and it would all be over.

  Then everything happened in a flash. There was a loud thump and the black-scaled body whipped away. Poppy sprang, but was simply left scrabbling at a mark in the sand.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  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.

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bsp; “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.