Rift (13 page)

‘What’s happening?’ asked Tamara. ‘We thought maybe something more’s happened.’ She came further under the awning of Ella’s tent, into the light of the paraffin lamp.

‘They just heard from the hospital,’ said Ella. ‘They’re rehydrating Matt, but he’s very weak, and he’s still not conscious. And Sergeant Kaonga’s spoken on the radio to the helicopters too. He says they’ll be going all night, and he promises to say if anything happens.’

‘Oh. OK.’ The other girl looked round curiously, unwilling to go. ‘Where’s Joe?’

‘There.’

He sat a little way out, watching the darkness, the shadow of a herd moving beyond the ring of yellow thrown by the powerful camp lamps. If you stared hard enough you caught the curve of an antler, the gleam of a zebra’s stripe, and Ella could almost believe she heard the tearing of grass, the shuffle and knock of hooves on beaten ground. The moon was rising, hard and bright in a clear sky, and with it, as if drawn from the earth by the moon’s climb, the chorus of crickets and frogs.

Joe didn’t move at Tamara’s enquiry. He was cross-legged, elbows on his knees, hands plucking absent-mindedly at spiky grass.

Tamara gazed at him for a minute. ‘You should come to the fire, Ella. You and Joe. We’re all there. You should come.’

Ella looked across at the inspector’s tent. No light inside: he wasn’t back from the police tents. Nine hours till first light. The night stretched, long and dark, ahead.

‘Joe, let’s go,’ she urged.

As if returning from somewhere, he looked at her. But at once he leapt up. Since nightfall, the heady exhilaration at Matt’s rescue five hours ago had given way to a jumpy, fretful edginess. He needed something to do, like she did. To ward off unbearable pictures that sneaked in whenever she let her mind fall idle.

A scatter of loose groups spread around the central space. Some played cards under the canteen canopy where lamps reflected strongly off the white canvas. Most sprawled round the fire, and there was an immediate general shuffling to make room for Joe and Ella. Tamara gave a few quick introductions for Ella: people smiled, a hand raised here and there in greeting, but nothing was said, directly. Conversations carried on, punctuated only by
a yelp and nervous laughter as bats sped low across their heads and into the night.

The darkness crowded in, a thousand eyes glittering in the firelight. She could hear, too, the insistent throb of the helicopters on the other side of Chomlaya, though it was dulled by the height of the rocks and split by the spasmodic screams of hyrax. Then from somewhere behind, she heard, ‘No, but it
is.
It’s like that time, in that film, when these people disappear on a rock and they never find them!’

‘Don’t say that! Don’t say
never
!’

‘I saw that film –
Picnic at Hanging Rock.
My sister’s got it.’

‘Wait, wait, it’s not the same – we’ll find them!’

‘It’s a
story
, that
Picnic
film.’

‘No, it’s true!’

‘Not! It’s a story – from a book, I saw about it on the internet.’

‘Well, Matt and Joe have come back already, so the others –’

A loud laugh stemmed the flow. Ella, already jarred by the talk and now by the laugh – strident, scornful, meant to be heard, meant to
interrupt
– swung round to see who it was.

The girls discussing the film sat a little way off. At Ella’s glance, realising she’d overheard, one flicked her an apologetic
glance. The others were glaring, annoyed, towards people sitting away from the fire. It took just a brief survey for Ella to detect the laugher: Sean, propped on one elbow, cards splayed in his hand. But his mind was not on the card game. His eyes scoured everyone near the fire, coming to rest first on Joe, and then on Ella.

Ella looked away.

At her side, Tamara said, ‘You stay clear of him.’ She was looking at Sean.

‘What’s going on with him, anyway?’ Ella asked. ‘What’s he got to do with Joe?’

Tamara looked down. There was a long, disquieting silence, and Ella had the impression that now everyone was listening, except perhaps Joe, who just plucked at the grass in a maddening, restless twitch.

‘Dunno,’ Tamara muttered finally. ‘Dunno what Sean’s got to do with anything . . . You stay clear of him though. Hear what I’m saying?’

‘He thinks he’s bad,’ put in Janey. ‘You know, thinks he’s really bad. Thinks he can do anything.’

‘Well, he came to Joe’s tent . . . ’ began Ella.

Joe’s head snapped up.

‘When you were sleeping,’ she said. ‘You know, before . . . ’

‘You should’ve said!’

‘It was
OK.
I just want to know why . . . ’

‘You know what?’ Janey broke in. ‘At school he wasn’t this way. He’s something else, now. Sean. It’s that Strutton. Her and all that. I tell you, here, he thinks no one’ll say no to him any more. Ella should just stay clear, that’s right, hey, Joe?’

Joe wasn’t hearing. Around him, others peopled the night – another night, not so long ago: Silowa walking from the darkinto firelight and Anna shrieking,
Silowa, don’t spook me! Don’t do that!
Silowa chuckling, holding the bundle out,
Matt, my good friend, I will make a presentation to you
, and Matt unrolling the cloth, the reed lying, gleaming, slender, burnished by the fireglow . . . Matt’s face splitting ear to ear with a grin; he lifts it, fingers the holes, blows a soft, whispery note, takes a breath and blows again – the note thin, building, opening, swelling, singing suddenly on the full high note of a bird; Silowa folding his long bony legs and sitting down beside him,
It is my friend Ndigi that has made it for you! He will come tomorrow to hear you play it!

So who cares now if that Strutton-monster’s got the harmonica?
Anna drapes an arm over Matt’s shoulder as the trills run up and down, up and down, higher and higher, and then finally down again to a deep, belling note, and a smattering of clapping
from someone across the fire and a shout, ‘Play something proper, Matt. Play that –’

Hey! Hey, you!

The tone unmistakable.

I said YOU.

Silence: like an avalanche of ice.

Yes, YOU. Whad’you want?

I do not understand.

Silowa, ignore him
, says Joe.

Don’t understand English, hey? I said, whad’you want?

Shut up, Sean
, says Anna.

I visit my friends
, says Silowa.

Go visit them somewhere else.

Sean!
Zak’s protest vehement. But snapped off by the way Sean turns and looks at him, and then at Antony. Who says nothing . . .

‘Sorry, Joe. Really. Sorry.’ Janey’s voice penetrated the memory, and she was leaning towards him, insistent, as if she saw what was in his head.

‘We should have, y’know . . . ’ said Antony.

Zak grunted.

‘What are you on about?’ asked Ella. ‘What are they on about, Joe?’

No one told her, just stared fixedly at the fire, every one of them. Then someone dropped more wood on it, and it snapped and popped and threw up a volley of angry sparks. Out on the plain, the eyes shifted, pinpricks of flame in the dark.

‘Stuff,’ said Joe suddenly, ‘just stuff.’

‘
Tell
me,’ Ella insisted.

He didn’t.

‘Joe?’

He gave a small shrug.

‘You’re not being fair!’ she said hotly. ‘This is about my sister, too.’

He glanced at her in surprise. Flushed with indignation, the glare she gave him stung. He conceded, ‘Stupid things. People picked on us. Not important now.’

‘Sean?’

‘Him. He had a few helpers.’

‘Like
who
, Joe? What did they do? How do you know it’s not important if you can’t remember anything?’

That struck home, because he still couldn’t drag sense from this chaos – fractured and nonsensical, blurred and muddled, memory and dream twisted together, frightening him more than he cared to admit.

Trying, he began, ‘Like – going on and on at Silowa about
being here; Anna and me and Matt about hanging out with him. Like falling about being buffalos blundering through the tents in the night so they’d collapse on us. Like tipping Matt in the lavatory trench, slinging his pipe after him. Flat on his face. He has to wade through the filth to find his pipe. Never got the smell off his shoes, so Strutton throws everything out of the tent because she says it stinks like a toilet!’ He stared away into the dark ferociously. ‘Like Strutton banning us from the trips. Making us dig the new lavatory trenches after the storm because that mob told her we had “an outsider” in our tent, and it was a “breach of security”. Like chucking Anna and Silowa’s fossils because it was a “breach of hygiene”.’ He snorted. ‘Like I said, he had some helpers –’

‘They did the scorpion,’ said Tamara, igniting the image in Joe’s head – the two girls tittering, Joe pushing past, ripping open the zip, freezing at the sight of Anna rooted to the bed; the scorpion a finger’s-width from her eyes, tail poised to strike, so that he had to edge back, grab a stick and advance again, stick extended, inch by slow inch, till he was in range and could knock the scorpion away.

And finding it dead, dead all the time, but Anna had been trapped for an hour, suspended in terror, while two girls spied and giggled at the joke.

‘Didn’t you tell anyone? You could tell
someone.
Someone could
do
something,’ Ella was saying.

‘There’s always comeback after,’ insisted Tamara.

‘Nowhere to go, here –’

‘Anyway, it got worse. It’s getting worse. That’s what I’m seeing,’ came a boy’s voice from the other side of the fire. ‘Starts off stupid – baby stuff. Gets bigger. You have to keep away. So they don’t
see
you, know what I mean?’

‘But who’s in Anna’s tent? I mean sharing with her? Didn’t they help?’

‘What, those two?’ Joe flung his arm out, pointing, and Ella looked. They sat close to Sean, one girl plaiting the other’s hair as she leaned against his legs. With a jolt of comprehension, Ella recognised the two who had confronted her after breakfast.

‘Them? She shared with them? How come?’

‘Who knows? Miss wouldn’t move her to our tent,’ said Janey. ‘We had space. Miss said Anna joined the trip late, so she’s got to take what she gets.’

‘So they got their kicks out of zipping up the tent from inside and not letting her in, “finding” hairy spiders in her sleeping bag . . . ’

‘Yeah, and sniggering about Silowa. Called him her
boyfriend
,’ said Tamara, mimicking a suggestive drawl. ‘Can’t get
their heads round things like being
friends
,’ she finished, contemptuously.

But the carcass, dripping. The blood and stench of the carcass. That was something new.
For a split second something else lurched at the back of Joe’s mind, and his stomach leapt in a surge of fright.

‘But why you, Joe?’ Ella’s interrogation stabbed through.

‘
I
don’t know what gets them going!’

‘But you see, Silowa’s an
outsider
!’ Zak jumped to his feet and mimicked Strutton’s voice and walk with such accuracy that, despite themselves, everyone laughed, even Ella.

‘Right, and Matt’s so
small
–’

‘And Anna’s
A Troublemaker
–’

‘And Joe’s their
protector.
’

Ella felt Joe tense. There was a silence.

‘Didn’t though, did I?’ he muttered after a minute. ‘
Didn’t.
’ He was quiet for a minute. He began again. ‘It was like it before Silowa came. Just got more –
obvious
– after.’

‘Policeman said, we do nothing, they’ll die,’ commented Zak soberly. ‘Can’t walk away now. Can’t say don’t want no trouble now.’

They all contemplated this.

‘It’s true what they say, Joe – you don’t remember anything
about going out of the camp?’ Antony asked. ‘How come?’

‘Leave it, Ant,’ Zak protested. ‘You sound like the police. Interrogating and that.’

‘No, but is it true? You heard Matt’s pipe?’

‘Thought I did,’ said Joe. ‘But it’s too far. They say.’

‘Those two,’ announced Antony suddenly, looking at Carl and Denny, sauntering away, ‘are just thugs. They were before. But
Sean
‘s a predator. He’s testing out his hunting ground.’

‘Oh,
deep
,’ said Janey.

‘But, see, predators, real ones like the animals out there, they do it so they can live, if they didn’t they’d
die
–’

‘But what’s it got to do with everyone disappearing?’ Suddenly Ella wanted to yell with frustration.

Joe looked at her, lifting his shoulders in a gesture of despair, and his face took on that stricken look she’d seen before.

And as if to echo him, a helicopter suddenly topped the ridge, its searchlight arcing across the rock and raking the camp. And then it sank away, out of sight, only its engine-grumble lingering. As if to fill the returning quiet, the distant roar of a lion swelled from the darkness of the plain.

‘Remember Matt when he heard a lion that first night?’ said Janey. ‘It was like Christmas for him! Went on about it
all day. Remember?’