Watcher's Web (4 page)

Nothing.

He flicked the
lighter harder and harder, his mouth set in a grim line. His lips
were very thin.

After a while,
Jessica started feeling sorry for him. He so clearly wanted to play
scout leader. “Maybe the lighter is out of fluid.”

“Don’t you
think I’d have checked that?”

He flicked the
lighter again and again, sweat sheening his arms. It was probably
not such a good idea to needle him so much. She could almost feel
his anger.

“It doesn’t
really matter. I mean—do we really need a fire? It’s not cold.”

He turned
around, glaring at her. He took a deep breath, held it for a second
or two before letting it out again. “Look, girl, why don’t you
attend to the others?”

“
My name
is Jessica, not
girl.
”

He gave her a
withering look.

Jessica sat
down next to the pilot under the tarpaulin, glaring at Brian’s
back. All right, so he didn’t want to be helped. Well, fuck
him.

She pulled her
knees up under her chin.

“Are you all
right?” came the pilot’s whisper.

“Yes, it’s
just . . .” She shrugged.

“He’s a bit
odd, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.” She
was glad the pilot volunteered.

“Do you know
him?”

“No.”

He raised his
eyebrows. “Oh. I thought you did. You know he’s the only reason we
waited for you at the airport?”

“He is?” Her
heart jumped.

“He told me
he’d be happy to wait when I said there was another passenger
coming.”

A chill crept
over her back. This guy kept staring at her. He made no effort to
introduce himself, but picked up on peculiarities of hers that no
one noticed—and yet seemed to gloss over the most obvious ones.
Between that and the accident and the mysterious message on her
phone . . . It couldn’t all be a coincidence, or could
it? Or was she being overly suspicious? Heaven knew she’d had
plenty of reason for that.

No, her
imagination was running away with her. She had never met anyone who
knew about the mist. Why would she be sharing a plane with one?

In all
likelihood, she would have asked the pilot to wait, too, knowing
how hard it was to find alternative transport in the country. But
somehow he didn’t feel like the kind of person who would have that
much concern for other people.

“I’m beginning
to wish I missed the flight,” she said.

“You’re not
the only one. I was rostered on a different flight and took this
one only so that I could go to my brother’s birthday tomorrow.”

“I’m—ouch!”
Something pricked the skin just above her sock. Something black,
soft and slimy, like a slug. She swiped at it, flicking it into the
bushes. “Yuk, these things bite.”

“What is
it?”

“Some kind of
black slug. Look there, on your shoe.”

He pulled his
foot closer to see. His face twisted into a disgusted mask and he
flicked the creature off. “Great, leeches.”

It wasn’t a
leech, she had seen plenty of those on last year’s school kayaking
camp, but Jessica wasn’t going to argue about it. Blood-sucking
slugs were the last thing she felt like dealing with. She pulled
her socks up as far as they would go and stuffed the hems of her
trouser legs in them. From the sound of shifting leaves, she
gathered Martin was doing the same.

A bit later,
Brian joined them. He sank down in the leaf litter and heaved a
great angry sigh. The pile of sticks lay like a large dark mole
hill. No one spoke.

They sat
in the advancing night, sharing drinks from Martin’s water bottle,
while drops of water
plocked
on
the tarpaulin. Every now and then, Brian would get up to check on
the businessman, but he never said anything when he came back and
Jessica never asked. She knew the news couldn’t be good.

Martin fell
into some kind of fevered sleep. He mumbled and tossed and turned,
every now and then letting out snorting snores that made Jessica
sit up straight and strain her ears. When would the rescue team
come?

The night
drowned in shrills and cries and buzzes. Wings fluttered close to
her face and tickling creatures ran up her legs under her trousers.
Some time later, a breeze picked up and blew away the veils of
mist. Gnarled black shapes materialised: the trunks of enormous
trees covered in growths so they looked like yetis with arms
stretched towards the sky. Mossy boulders dotted the hillside like
marbles thrown by a giant hand. A patch of moonlight travelled
across the treetops, showing the canopy above.

“The mist is
lifting,” Brian grumbled and after the long silence his voice
sounded loud. It was very deep, and rumbled in his chest. “That
means tomorrow the search party will have no trouble finding
us.”

Oh, she hoped
so. He creeped her out. Seriously.

More drops of
water fell on the tarpaulin; strange noises drifted from somewhere
far off. Jessica scratched exposed skin at every itch. Carnivorous
slugs. Furry trees. In all the time since the crash, she had not
heard a single familiar bird call. The trees, with their covering
of ferny plants and large branches so close to the ground, did not
look familiar either. On kayaking trips with school, she had
traversed rainforest gullies full of tree ferns and giant gum trees
with white trunks like graceful nymphs, where the sound of
whipbirds and the laughter of kookaburras rang in the forest. Here,
there were none of those familiar things. Just where had they
landed?

“You have a
sleep,” Brian said after a while. “I’ll keep watch and wake you
when I hear something.”

Jessica was
not tired in the least, but she lay down anyway. Her thoughts went
around in circles. Maybe she was silly, but she didn’t trust him.
He was weird and made her nervous.

She couldn’t
stop scratching herself, checking her skin for the horrid black
creatures. Every now and then, she held her breath for as long as
she could, listening for the sounds of the forest, as if the slugs
made a hungry sucking noise. Then she would remember the crash, the
frightening sensation of falling, and she would try to piece
together how it could be that the day had passed so quickly.
Nothing made sense. Then she would drift off, only to be jolted by
a grunt or a snort from Martin. And remember that she wanted to
stay awake. And find herself covered in sweat. She would look up to
see Brian’s silhouette sitting there, staring into the dark. But
somehow, sleep managed to claim her.

Chapter
4

“G
IRL, WAKE UP!”
Someone shook Jessica’s leg.

“Huh—what?”

She pushed
herself up, seeing nothing but pitch darkness. The scent of musty
air. Her hands clawed in leaf litter.

What the
hell . . .

Then it came
back to her. The crash, the forest.

“Someone’s
coming,” Brian said. Leaves rustled as he jumped to his feet. He
whistled so loudly her ears hurt. “We’re here!”

Footsteps came
closer. Male voices rang out. Jessica peered into the darkness,
expecting to see the glare of torches and hear the barking of dogs,
but all remained dark.

Strange.

The footsteps
stopped quite close. From somewhere ahead came the sound of panting
breaths. A musty scent wafted through the air, reminiscent of
something that had been in stale water for days, mixed with a smell
of fish.

“Who are you?”
Brian asked, his voice laced with the same apprehension Jessica
felt.

A man spoke in
a foreign language, full of harsh and guttural sounds.

Brian mumbled,
“What the hell’s going on here?” He took a step back, stumbling
into Jessica. “We need help. Our plane crashed. There are four of
us and one’s been injured real bad—”

The rest of
the sentence drowned in a blue flash. By its brief burst of light,
Jessica could make out five figures on the slope below. Small and
lithe, with wild mops of hair in dreadlocks. The closest one held
out a fist, pointing at Brian.

“What the
fuck, they’re shooting—”

That was
Martin’s voice.

Holy shit!
They must have stumbled on a group of poachers, or a drug
syndicate’s hide-out, or some set-up like that. Her father often
talked about those and how dangerous those men were. As a police
officer, he would know.

Jessica
shouted, “Brian, get out of here, hide yourself!”

She scrambled
up the slope, slipping on boulders, stumbling over branches and
fallen tree trunks. Shadows followed her, quick and silent.
Something gripped her arm. She screamed and kicked. There were
shouts, rough voices, more footsteps; hands on her arms, holding
her, pulling a rag around her wrists. She wriggled. One of her arms
shot free and hit what felt like somebody’s face.

“Let me, go,
let me go! I know nothing. I won’t say anything.”

A wave of heat
welled up from within her, rising to the skin in swirls of sparks.
It flowed into her arms, up her shoulders, burning like boiling
water.

Oh damn it,
that was the tension still inside her coming out.

Blue-white
light flowed out through her skin, engulfed her hands and crackled
up her arms in a net of sparkling threads. Shapes formed in the air
while the sounds of the forest dulled.

*     *     *

She was on the
front steps to the main entrance of her inner city boarding school.
There was a police car in the drive. The school principal stood
under the arched entrance of the porch, surrounded by about half
the girls from her year. Some were crying.

A voice said,
“They found nothing?”

It was a male
voice, unfamiliar, coming from her throat.

The principal
shook her head and glanced up over her reading glasses. “Are you a
relative?”

“
I
am . . .” She found herself hesitating, in her male
vision-persona, and a wave of anguish washed over her.
His
anguish.

Where
are you?

*     *     *

Jessica
tried to reply
I
don’t know
but she
was back in the forest again, in the noise, the shouting, the smell
of singed vegetation.

Panting,
Jessica swayed on her feet. What the hell did she just see?

Then she
realised something else: her captors had let go of her hands.

She sensed
them standing at close distance, hesitant. Their fear rippled over
her in the same way Angus’ feelings did, like a wave of cold.

Jessica ran.
She stumbled because she couldn’t see though the purple blotches
that danced in her vision. Branches cracked and leaves rustled,
slapping in her face. Jessica blundered through the forest, into
trees and rocks, tripping, falling.

After a while,
when no one followed her, she stopped and listened.

Wings buzzed.
Animals croaked, shrilled and wailed in the night. The smells had
returned to normal: mushrooms, dead leaves and the faint whiff of
fuel.

And silence.
For a long time, she stood there, waiting to hear footsteps and
voices, but nothing came. The poachers were happy to have chased
her off? They were scared and were going back to get
reinforcements?

She had to get
back to Brian and Martin. They needed to get out of here.

“Brian?” she
whispered and when there was no answer, a bit louder, “Brian?”

Silence. A
patch of moonlight touched the tree canopy. Ghostly shadows turned
the forest into an impenetrable mass of black and grey.

“Brian!”

Half-blind,
she pushed through the undergrowth. Branches and boulders tripped
her, twigs scratched at her face. She had no idea where she was
going, except down a hill—because she had run up a hill to flee the
men. She lifted her foot to step over a boulder. The ground
crumbled under her, and she slid, legs-first, down a gravelly slope
. . . into knee-deep water.

A creek
gurgled past her, murmuring and whispering in a bed of soft sand.
She sat there, dazed, wet all over. In the daylight, she hadn’t
seen a creek. If she had, she could have refreshed the stale water
from Martin’s drink bottle.

Bloody hell.
She could have injured herself badly. That was really stupid, to go
thrashing about in the night like a chook without a head. There
could have been snakes, or a ravine. Brian was a big boy, old
enough to keep his head down until he could see enough to move
around. She’d worry about him in the morning.

The
truth was, though, the stupid oaf did have her worried. Those idiot
poachers had been
shooting.
She couldn’t recall hearing shots after they had tried to
grab her, but Martin and the businessman were injured. No way they
could run if they needed to.

The thoughts
kept going around and around.

Jessica
stumbled out of the creek and sat on the moss, her back against a
tree, staring into the darkness. Her ears strained for sounds, she
twitched with every tickle and ran her hands over her legs to check
for biting insects, or carnivorous slugs. The thought of those
things gave her the heebie-jeebies.

After what
seemed like an eternity, the dark faded into grey and then an even
lighter grey.

Only wisps of
mist still hung between a gnarled, knotted tangle of trees
stretching out of view in all directions. Large mossy boulders
covered every bit of ground, crowded humps silvered in soft
light.

Halfway up the
hill, bits of white, twisted metal peeked through a mass of tangled
greenery.

Just as well
she hadn’t tried to find the plane in the dark last night. It would
have been impossible to get through the tangle of branches without
seeing where she was putting her feet.