Watcher's Web (6 page)

Another
rainforest creek ran in the next gully. Across that, another slope
of boulders. Bloody hell, the landscape was like a giant version of
road corrugations. There just seemed no end to the dense cover of
trees, hiding the sky from sight. No sign of civilisation. Not the
faintest trace of anything familiar. No sound.

By the time
they reached the next valley, also with a creek, the light was
turning grey. Jessica’s watch said 11pm. It was still doing
something, but not displaying the correct time. Moisture
damage?

This
particular gully spread out into a mossy glade, where the creek
pooled into a waterhole from which it trickled lazily over
algae-covered rocks.

Brian sank
down on the moss and promptly fell asleep, leaning back against a
tree trunk, his mouth open. In the fading light, his face stood out
like that of a ghost. Exhausted, not used to bush-bashing. His
hands rested in his lap, with fine, long fingers, now green and
scratched, but with clear impressions of rings he normally wore.
What working man wore jewellery on all his fingers? She hadn’t
asked him what he did for a living, but he looked like an artist to
her. Jessica wandered down to the waterhole, shivering because the
back of her shirt was still wet from her backpack. Her stomach
cramped from lack of food. Soon, they would have to make a
decision—slow down to find something to eat, or press on towards
the safety of civilisation. Except where would they find food? Bush
food was not unfamiliar to her, but she had seen nothing edible,
nothing even remotely familiar. No lilly-pillies, no quandongs, or
anything that grew in rainforests. She had no idea what these
tangled trees were. She had never seen them before. That gnawed at
her. She knew bush plants well enough to recognise a few edible
ones. She knew gum trees, or ash, but they were big trees that had
straight mottled or pitted trunks and leaves all the way above the
rainforest shrubbery, not like a covering of fur on their
trunks.

Then there
were the animals. Apart from the carnivorous slugs, she had seen no
animals. There should have been bush turkeys; there should have
been lyrebirds scratching around the leaf litter and whip birds
calling out in the shrubbery, although you hardly ever saw
them.

She glanced
over her shoulder. Brian was still sound asleep.

As quickly and
as silently as she could, she peeled off her clothes and slipped
into the water. Its freshness enfolded her. The sandy creek bed was
soft under her feet. Beautiful.

There
had to be a volcanic spring somewhere nearby, for the water was
warm and had a faint sulphuric smell. Like New Zealand. Another
chill.
There were no
volcanic springs in Australia.

Or were there?
Hadn’t she heard of some place near . . . she had
forgotten, but it was somewhere up the coast. How the heck would
the plane have ended up there?

Stop
fretting, Jess. Wherever we are, worrying is not going to change
it.

She rinsed her
hair and sat on the sandy bottom until her body shone pale in the
low light.

When she
turned to clamber out, Brian was awake and watching her.

She
gasped and jumped up into a crouch, covering herself with her arms.
He couldn’t have seen anything. She had no boobs to speak of
anyway. She didn’t even have the hairy bits you-know-where.
There
was
nothing to see. She was ugly
and boyish and bony.

Yet he was
staring.

She stared
back, her heart hammering. Here she was, naked, alone in the forest
with a strange man. He might be exhausted, but she was a
seventeen-year-old girl and a grown man would have no trouble
getting from her what he wanted.

Brian
didn’t move. He sat there, leaning back on his hands, his legs
stretched in front of him and crossed at the ankles. Damn, she
couldn’t see his crotch—that would be a dead giveaway. Why was he
doing this? She
needed
him
if they had to climb more boulders tomorrow. She didn’t want to go
alone, but she bloody well didn’t trust him as far as she could
throw him.

He said
nothing, and Jessica stayed in the water, just the top of her
shoulders exposed. The air was getting nippy. A drop of water
plinked into the pool, and a moment later, another one.

Great. It was
raining.

Eventually she
asked. “Would you mind?”

“What?”

“I’d like to
get out.”

“Oh. Sorry.”
His voice was warm, bemused, but maybe she only imagined that.

He turned
sideways, but not quite enough for her to be sure he wasn’t
watching. She crab-walked to the bank, grabbed her shirt and pulled
it over her head wet and cold. Then she crawled out of the water
and angled for her other clothes. God, those undies stank, but her
clean ones were in her backpack which sat exposed on the bank.
Bugger. She pulled the dirty ones on as quickly as possible.
Getting into her jeans with wet legs was harder, but she managed
it. What now? Go back to him and . . . what?

“Brian?”

“Yes.”

An uneasy
silence.

Then he said,
“Come and sit here. I’m not going to harm you.”

Suspicion rose. They all said that. Sex wasn’t supposed to
hurt, was it? And if they enjoyed it, the girl should enjoy it,
too. Never mind that she had never enjoyed the feel of a sweating
male body against hers. Men stank and they hurt her. All of them.
God, that Luke at John Braithwaithe’s farm had been a beast.
Women like it
rough,
he had said,
and, knowing little better, she had put up with it for far too
long. Problem was, he was nice during the day, and he paid for
trips to resorts up the coast and even Thailand. He made her feel
accepted.

God, she
didn’t even like resorts.

And where he
got the money was still a mystery to her.

Vulnerable
women attracted abusive, manipulative men.

She called
back through the forest, “There is a soft patch of moss here. I’ll
sleep here tonight.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry if
I upset you,” he said. “I was just curious.”

Curious
about what?

“I didn’t mean
to disturb you . . . Jessica.” That was the first time
he’d used her name.

Well,
you were disturbing me.

Jessica
sat down, a comfortable distance from him, her legs folded before
her as if ready to spring. She didn’t know whether to keep watching
him or to turn away. She wanted to do both, to make sure he
couldn’t sneak up on her, to make sure he didn’t interpret her
watching him as interest. She was
finished
with men.

He continued,
“I want to thank you. You seem to be well-trained for this
situation, this . . . forest.”

“I’ve done a
lot of bushwalking.”

Another
silence. He shifted; leaves rustled. “Where were you
travelling?”

Why was he so
talkative all of a sudden?

“Just to
Sydney.”

“Family there
or . . .”

“No family. I
go to school there.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Next thing
he’d want to know what school. But he didn’t.

More drops
were now trickling from the tree canopy. The uneasy silence
lingered. A twinge of shame crept through her. All day, they had
helped each other. He had pushed her up rocks, and she hadn’t felt
embarrassed by his touch. Why now? What was the harm in a chat? She
was just being paranoid. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t doing
anything else.

“What about
you? Were you travelling to Sydney?”

“Yes.”

“Family?” He’d
have a wife waiting for him somewhere.

“Business. I
have no family in Australia.”

“They’re all
overseas?”

He stiffened.
Averted his eyes. “Yes.”

“What
country?”

“New
Zealand.”

No way. Not
with that accent. “Where did they come from before that?”

He gave
her a sharp look. She could almost hear him think
you ask too many
questions.
The
suspicion meter went up again.

She stammered,
“Well, I thought . . . because of your
accent . . .” But she let it go. Wrong subject. One
obviously didn’t go there with him. This man was one hell of a
strange puppy.

He rose,
brushing leaves from his trouser legs, a useless gesture, since his
trousers were as filthy as dirt-caked as hers. “If you don’t mind,
and if it’s appropriate, I’d like to wash myself as well.”

“Go ahead.”
Appropriate? He’d just been staring at her while she was naked and
now he asked about appropriate?

He stumbled
his way to the waterhole, wincing and stiff. At the bank, he
finally took off that leather jacket. He folded it carefully and
put it on a rock, as if it was precious. He reminded her of one of
John Braithwaite’s young farm hands, who had a jacket that had been
given to him by some singer or other.

Underneath the
jacket Brian wore a checked flannelette shirt, as was popular with
workmen. This one looked new, the red and blue stripes still
vibrant. He unbuttoned it and peeled it off, discarding it in a
heap on top of the jacket. His skin was ghost-white, with a tattoo
on his left shoulder blade. Some sort of emblem, but he was too far
away, and it was too dark for her to see exactly what it was.

Next he
unbuttoned his trousers. She turned away, because there was no way
she wanted to give him the slightest impression that she was
interested in him.

Water rippled
and splashed.

Drops trickled
from the trees in increasing frequency. They pattered on leaves,
dripped down trunks. The little fern-gardens on tree trunks
glistened with moisture. The pool in the creek had already merged
with the night.

By the time
Brian splashed out of the water, it was almost completely dark.

It was
now raining in all earnest. There was nowhere to shelter—the
tarpaulin had been burnt in the nightly attack. Jessica found a
marginally dry spot under an overhanging tree branch, but tree
roots stuck in her backside, water trickled down the trunk and she
kept thinking about carnivorous slugs and then thinking about food
and that made the hunger pains worse. At times, too, tingling air
crept over her skin. Just like she had felt before the plane
crashed. She shivered. The accident had all been her fault. The
more she thought about it, the more certain she became. She stared
into the dark, her thoughts tangled in mires of worry. In her
thoughts, she faced a court investigation into the crash. A
mechanic would say,
There was nothing wrong with the engine, Your
Honour.
And then
everyone in the room would look at her.

Ridiculous of course, but it kept her awake, and it stirred
unwelcome memories of a time when she’d been thirteen and innocent,
when the blue web was still something she thought she controlled
and she was facing a judge at least four times her age in a
wood-pannelled courtroom packed with folk from Barrow Creek who had
travelled to the city to see her
put in her place.
She could still hear the judge’s voice, speaking
clearly as if he thought she was stupid.
You do understand, Jessica, that you’re
being accused of the murder of Stephen Lewis
Fitzgerald . . .

She shivered
involuntarily.

Every now and
then, she thought she heard Brian’s voice, mumbling something,
talking in his sleep. She couldn’t make out his words, and at times
she thought he was speaking in his native language. His voice
scared her. It sounded like he was ready for the loony bin.

She must have
dozed off a bit anyway because all of a sudden, the light was blue,
and she lay on her back in the leaf litter staring up at the tree
canopy. A damp smell rose from the forest floor, but it had stopped
raining.

Brian was
still asleep, on his side, his back facing her, his jacket covering
his shoulder and body. His hair was loose and spilled into the leaf
litter.

Overnight, it
had turned brilliant white.

Chapter
6

W
HITE
HAIR
?
That was
ridiculous. No one had white hair except elves in fairytales. No
one under forty at any rate.

Well, she had
to hand it to him—without that dye he looked younger, his face kind
of high-class with a long, straight nose, high cheekbones and thin
but well-defined lips. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes
half-moon crescents of silver hair. His eyebrows, too, had turned
white. Albino.

He was
handsome. Not drop-dead gorgeous like some sultry-eyed teenage
football hero who’d be arrested for drunk behaviour and groping
women by the time he was twenty-five, and fat and ugly by the time
he was thirty, but the type of handsomeness that didn’t age.

But why the
disguise?

Who the bloody
hell was he with his dyed hair and his accent and his evasive
replies? Why was he on the flight, why had he suggested the pilot
wait for her? Why did he seem to notice things about her other
people didn’t and ignore things that other people mentioned? Did he
perhaps have anything to do with . . . the plane
crashing, with the web, with the male voice on the other end?

As quietly as
she could, she crossed the space between them and crouched on the
moss next to him.

She breathed
out slowly, and let the strands of mist flow from her, tentative.
The blue mist snaked around his sleeping form, caressing him like
ghostly fingers. It wasn’t right, using it on a person, and it was
something she hadn’t done for a long time. He might notice; she
might find out something she’d rather not know. Worse, she might go
too far and that thought sent shivers along her spine. Back in the
time of innocence, she had done so many things that still gave her
nightmares. She had never known what harm these threads could cause
until it was too late. The mist was weak—she needed energy,
sunlight, food to work this trick. The strands snaked over his
jacket, and sought out the warmth of his skin. Buried in his
arm.