THE MOUNTAIN By KATZMAREK(c) --------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR'S NOTE (C) This work is offered for free under the Berne Convention. It may not be used for profit without the Author's express permission in writing. The Author's nom de plume, KATZMAREK, may not be removed from any copies made. -------------------------------------------------- Stevie looked into the mirror at the pall of white dust, tinged with black exhaust smoke. He figured he ought to tell the boss it was about time the rig had a service, but, then, she always smoked like hill coming up the ridge. Ahead he saw the brooding presence of Mount Maungatapu across the river flat and felt a burning need to piss. There was a little picnic ground around the bend and he decided to pull over for a leak. He slowed so that the cloud of eye-searing dust caught up and wafted through the open window. He was too late closing the window and cursed as the grit settled over the gauges and his clipboard hanging from the dash. He switched off and climbed down from the cab. This place always unsettled him. The local Maori had a tapu on the place - some say, dating from a century ago. Stevie didn't much care for the old stories. He'd had enough Maori culture rammed down his throat at school and mostly they seemed like fairy stories to him. But this place, that mountain, had a kind of eerie fascination. There wasn't much of a picnic ground here and the long grass showed just how much interest the County had in maintaining it. It was supposed to be a lookout, but, hardly any tourists came up the gravel road and even fewer stopped. A bleached wooden table struggled for visibility in the high ryegrass. A fence had long since fallen over and given way to the wild blackberry. A track lead down towards a creek, partly overgrown by gorse and bracken. It just wasn't a place where you felt like stopping. The dust was still rolling by and settling on his face and clothes. Stevie hated the stuff and thought the creek would be a good idea to wash off. Also, he wanted a bit of privacy - stock trucks and milk tankers passed by here and he didn't want to be caught piddling on the shrubs in full view. The track was eroded and strewn with boulders. Nevertheless, he wasn't afraid of a bit of goat treking and edged his way down towards the creek. He hadn't gone more than a few metres when he spotted a discarded credit card amid the scrub. He tried to retrieve it but there were too many thistles. "Bugger it," he muttered. He wasn't going to get scratched for a piece of plastic. Down below he could hear the trickling of the creek. Otherwise, it was the only sound and it felt creepy. He looked up again at Maungatapu - a dark, conical, looming, mass that appeared to mock - to intimidate by its very weirdness. It just looked so out of place among the pine covered dusty hills. Was it an extinct volcano or a chunk of block faulting pushed up by the force of nature thousands of years ago? Stevie didn't know and had never paid that much attention to geology at school. He'd always wanted to drive the big rigs and subjects like that seemed irrelevant. He came to a part where the track had slipped down towards the creek. The slope was loose clay and Stevie's boots slipped so he fell on his arse. "Shit!" he cursed as he slid unceremoniously down about three metres. When he stopped, he tried to regain some sense of dignity when he spotted her. He probably would have missed it if he hadn't fallen. She was half concealed in the brush and covered with brown, parched fern fronds. Stevie saw a leg, white and waxy, and he hoped it was some shop mannequin. But, in his mind he knew it wasn't. It was a body, dumped and dead. "Jesus!" he cried, "shit and fucking Christ!" She was on her front, twisted and bent so her still face and sightless eyes gazed out towards the black mountain across the river flat. She was young, he thought, and pretty. He looked up and imagined her body being thrown from the top of the hill. But, someone had attempted to cover her up, he thought, so she must've been placed here. Stevie's mouth was dry and his face felt clammy and cold. His skin tingled with anxiety as he wrestled momentarily with his indecision. He needed to call the police, he decided, slowly, but his mobile had no coverage out here. There was no-none for miles around - clear as far as Raumai, the next town. The merest hint of a breeze brought the far off, staccato rumbling of a rig climbing the ridge. 'Help!' he thought, and he stirred into action. Just as he made the road, he spied the dust cloud of an approaching truck. One of those huge milk semis was tackling the grade. He knew most of the drivers and figured he'd stop and help him out. Presently, the blue Volvo ground around the cutting and slowed when he saw Stevie's rig parked at the lay by. It was driven by Jonno, a huge tattooed fellow he'd yarned with many times at the pub down in Raumai. "Hey, wazzup?" Jonno yelled as he pulled to a halt. "Broken down?" "Nah. A body," Stevie yelled back. "Down there!" "Yeah?" Jonno replied, suspiciously. Stevie could tell the driver thought he was the butt of some gag and was waiting for the punchline. "Honest," Stevie insisted, "a girl. Someone must've dumped her." "Y'kiddin'?" "Real!" "Shit! Lemmee take a look?" Stevie thought the big guy was too eager - too overwhelmed with morbid interest. He didn't like the idea - Jonno looking her over, well, like in ways he didn't want to think about. But, he needed to prove it before he could send him off to get help, so, he lead him down to where she lay. "Hey, a purse!" Jonno said, pointing to the undergrowth. There amid the bracken was a handbag with its contents spilled out. There was make up, lipstick, and an assortment of plastic cards. Jonno made to retrieve it, but Stevie held him back. "Forensics," he told him, as if he had the faintest idea. "Cops won't want the scene disturbed." "Uh, yeah," Jonno shrugged, clearly disappointed. "Better go down to Raumai - get the cops up here," Stevie told him. "Uh, yeah, sure," Jonno replied, clearly reluctant to leave. "I'll stay. Y'know, secure the area? Don't want anyone coming down and disturbin' anything." "Sure," Jonno looked around, bemused. He reckoned about one vehicle a month stopped here, but nodded anyway. "Shame, eh?" he said, "suppose it's rape? Cut their fuckin' knobs off, I say." "Better hurry," Stevie said, anxiously. "Sure, sure," the big guy replied and turned to scale back up the track to the road. "Fuckin' shame." Stevie retreated a ways up the track lest he inadvertantly disturb some evidence. From there he could just see her out thrust leg - bent at an awkward angle. Jonno's rig started up with a roar and a plume of black smoke. He listened to the Volvo's exhaust brake as it blipped its way down hill towards the distant township. There was nothing in Raumai but a garage and a community hall, but it had cellphone coverage. The cops will take maybe an hour to arrive, he figured. He should've got Jonno to call his boss. He was going to be real late, he thought. Stevie found himself a small shelf to sit down and rolled a smoke. An hour seemed a long wait and he wasn't sure how he was going to spend the time. He spent his days moving - down highways and gravel roads such as this. The thought of crouching in one spot for an hour seemed a lifetime. As he puffed a cloud of smoke, he looked up at Maungatapu. A thin whisp of cloud drifted lazily from the ridge and he thought the mountain was mocking him. The place gave him the creeps and he shivered. The credit card beckoned him from the scrub. He felt the urge to get it - to find how who this person was. At the same time, did he really want to know? Did he want to intrude into this person's life now she was no longer alive? He decided to leave it where it was for the cops. Something else caught his eye - a flash of blue among the dull yellow of the gorse flowers. Maybe it was another piece of flotsam from the lady's purse - a compact perhaps, or some other crap women carry around with them? But this item was buried deep in the scrub in a place something was unlikely to fetch up by accident. He shuffled a little closer. He could now see it was a flowering plant - one he'd never come across before. The large petals curled like an orchid's - slender, but becoming broader at the ends. It reminded him of hands stretched out as if in supplication. A streak of a paler blue ran up the inside and the accompanying leaves was of a rich green - waxy and shining. It was such a beautiful thing that Stevie could do nothing but stare. He felt a tingling of anxiety run up his spine. That anxiety became a shiver, and soon he was shaking and trembling. This just wasn't right - this shouldn't be here. Nothing about this flower seemed natural. He recalled some of the stories about this mountain, this place, and it was easy to believe in ghosts. But, Stevie was rational and didn't believe in anything he couldn't taste, smell, view with his own eyes and boot it with his foot. This was the lala territory of superannuated Maori mystics and the New Age, hippie European macrame and herb set. These city weirdos were not his people - he'd grown up in the country, close to nature, and these nutters hadn't the first clue. This plant was real, however, and he struggled for a sensible answer to its presence. How could it thrive in the darkness of the bracken and gorse? Those European transplants sucked all the nutrients from the soil. A flower such as this shouldn't be able to survive, let alone look so pristine and pure like an exhibit at a flower show. Stevie shuffled a little farther up the track until he could see the familiar presence of his rig. It was his link back to reality - away from his imaginings of the supernatural - away from the weird flower. He'd settled but for a few minutes in his new perch when something cold and soft brushed his face. He touched his cheek and found tiny drips of moisture. Rain, he thought, looking at the sky. The heavens were blue and cloudless. That did it - jumping to his feet he bolted for the cab of his truck. The cops excelled themselves. It was only about 40 minutes before the first of the police cars screamed up the road from Raumai. The cop flung it into the layby in a shower of stones and a cloud of dust. The officers jumped out, one running for the track and the other coming up to Stevie's rig. "What's you got?" the cop asked. "A body y'reckon?" "Yeah," Stevie replied, "down there - a girl!" "Uh huh. And what time was that, sir?" the cop asked pulling out his pad. "Hey!" the other cop called from the top of the track, "how far down is it?" "Ten metres or so," Stevie told him, "you see a purse - cards and shit. It's just beyond that." A few minutes later the cop appeared again. "Where'd you say?" he asked. "Down there," Stevie said, agitated. "Can't you see it?" "Nope! You want to show us?" Shit, Stevie thought, bloody cops couldn't find their arses with a mirror! He got down from the cab and went once more to the top of the track. "No-one else been here?" the first cop asked, "someone moved it perhaps?" "Of course not," Stevie told him, indignant. "Been here all the time." "Nothing's there," the cop said, "see? Nothing but someone's purse. Probably dumped by some thief. Nicks the money and dumps the rest." "But it was here," Stevie insisted, looking at the empty space under the palm fronds. "Right there. It was covered up." "Not there now," the cop told him, superfluously. "Been driving a few hours, have we?" "I'm not tired!" "Maybe we ought to check your logbook?" the other cop said. "You only have the one, I suppose?" "Look, I don't understand it," Stevie told them. "That guy who called you - he can back me up. He saw it, just like me." "Hang on," he said, "better call up and find out what's the story." Some time later, the cop returned from the patrol car. "Apparently," he said, fixing Stevie accusingly, "the guy who called up says he never saw a thing. He reckons you just told him there was a body, and..." "That's bullshit!" Stevie exclaimed, "he went down - I told you..." "Yeah, well, there's nothing down there except some lady's purse. We could do you for wasting police time, y'know?" "Yeah," the other cop agreed. "Say, you're not been taking that No Doze stuff, are you? I heard you can get halucinations and..." "Look!" Stevie was floundering. "I've been driving for ten years - mostly on these roads. I know these places like the back of my hand. I don't do drugs and I know when I'm tired. There was a fucking body down there half an hour a go and if you fuckwits would have a good look around..." "Hey, see here!" the cop interrupted. "You calm down and have a good rest. I don't want to have to take you in." Stevie realised he was on a loser. Anything he said from this point on condemned in in the police's eyes. He knew enough when to say nothing. Many a boozy night at the local had taught him that. "Yeah, ah, sorry, mate," he told them. "Could've sworn, y'know. Maybe I was dreaming it all, eh?" "Yeah, sure, mate." The cop subsided. "You climb back up there and have a snooze - my advice." After the policemen retrieved the purse and its contents, they sped off back the way they came. Stevie went back to the track, scratched his head, perplexed. He tried to remember some of those old tales about this place. It was said, he recalled, Maungatapu was the place the souls of the dead came for redress. Who the Hell was she, he wondered, and kicked himself he never got her name. She'd died in tragic circumstances, perhaps, and came to ask of the mountain to place a curse on her killer? "Crazy talk," he muttered, before looking back up at the mountain. It was clear, now, and the whisp of cloud had gone. The day was clear and bright and that little hint of a shower had passed. He wandered down to where he'd seen the flower. There, below the bracken, he found it. It was now whithered and ruined - its bright green leaves failing to find the sustenance amid the scrub. The deep blue of its petals were now but thin whisps of brown - cracked and brittle. That did it. Stevie climbed hurriedly back the way he came and scrambled into the cab of his truck. He'd have a rest, sure, but not in this place. KATZMAREK(c) ---------------------------------------------------