The late-morning fog lay thick as the Kokopu Waters people rode alongside the river on their way into Kahuika. Everything was damp and beaded with moisture. They couldn’t see more than a few metres. The horses’ hooves sounded muffled and the jangle of their harness was barely audible. They peered warily about as they turned left and started ascending the hill away from the river and towards the markets. Their clothes were soaked in lavender water, their saddles and bridles anointed with oil.
Everyone was jumpy, alert to every little noise and keeping close to each other. As Sean put it, they’d had one of their more rugged weeks. All of a sudden their days were full of kēhua, and every night the Ponaturi in the guise of their loved ones had been scrabbling at their windows. They’d been working their way through the town, digging backyard graves and interring the local residents. And every day they’d been watched by kēhua.
‘Those guys really give me the creeps,’ Manu said. ‘I walked right through one yesterday. It was just like somebody opened the freezer, except it was scary as well as cold. Fuck that. I think I’d rather have the Ponaturi.’
‘No way,’ said Kevin. ‘Those guys are bad news. At least the kēhua can’t kill you.’
Kevin and Hoheria had been hanging lavender sprays everywhere in their house, and around their doors and windows, and splashing everything with lavender water. But it hadn’t stopped the creatures coming, and a clumsy caricature of Kevin’s mother had been outside the window two nights ago. The sight had really upset him. He’d wanted to open the window and deal to the creature, but Hoheria had stopped him.
‘Don’t,’ she warned. ‘It can’t hurt you while it’s out there, and there’s no telling what’ll happen if you let it in.’
Kevin heeded Hoheria’s warning. He hadn’t let the creature in. But he’d tried to go out to meet it. Hoheria had tackled him outside the front door, wrestling with her inclination to swear at him and slap his face.
‘This won’t do any good,’ she’d said to him. ‘It’s not really your mother, and you know that too.’
‘Yes, I do know,’ he’d said. ‘But I can’t stand it using my memories like that. It’s just not right.’ He’d turned to carry on around the house and just as Hoheria grabbed his arm to pull him back, the Ponaturi, alerted by the disturbance, had surrounded the pair.
Kevin and Hoheria fought for their lives. They’d managed to get back to back before six of the monsters were on them. Most of the Ponaturi were only a metre high but between their high-pitched shrieks and their rotten-fish stench they felt to the pair like an army. Kevin seized a spade from where it was stuck in the ground beside the front path and swung it edge-on with all his strength at the neck of the largest monster just as two of the smaller ones started swarming up his legs. The spade bounced off, twisting, jarring, and dropping from his numb hands. But the blow knocked the monster to the ground and before it rose again he switched his attention to the others. He seized one, plucked it free, hurled it out towards the road, and grabbed the second one. It sank its teeth in his thigh as he pulled it free with a sharp pain as his flesh tore. Then out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the Ponaturi whistle through the air and strike the concrete path with its head. He half-turned to see that Hoheria had grasped the creature by the ankles and was beginning a second swing, to an accompanying shriek of alarm. Again the creature’s head cracked on the concrete and this time it split open.
With their way clear Hoheria and Kevin dashed for the front door and slammed it behind them. They stood in their candlelit hallway, their hands on their knees, breathing deeply, trying to still their pounding hearts.
Finally Hoheria spoke. ‘I hate to say it, but I did warn you.’
Kevin straightened and looked at Hoheria. ‘You’re right. Sorry. I don’t know what got into me.’
‘That’s okay. And we did find out one important thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We can hurt the buggers.’
Kevin thought for a minute, then he put his hands on Hoheria’s shoulders. ‘You mean you can. It’s probably one of those fairy story things, like only the pure of heart can overcome the monster.’
Hoheria laughed. ‘My heart isn’t as pure as you might think.’
‘We’ve found the answer!’ Kevin cried out to Paki after they tied their horses at the rear of his tent, and fed and watered them. ‘Sort of.’
‘What answer?’ Paki said. ‘Forty-two?’ He was standing with Cheryl at the front of the tent behind a trestle table laden with freshly germinated plants: winter lettuces, kiwi spinach, curly kale and small white turnips.
‘No, mate, the Ponaturi.’ Paki dropped a tray of seedlings and spun around. ‘They can’t stand lavender. And Hoheria can hurt them, even if I can’t.’
‘Have a cup of tea with us,’ Paki said. ‘Tell us all about it.’ Later, when they were seated with a cup of tea and a piece of fried bread and jam each, he said, ‘We’ve had a lot of trouble with them lately. It’s the weather. Cold and foggy. They like the fog. They can control it. They hide in it.’ He paused. ‘They seem to have developed a new trick, too.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ said Sean. ‘And what’s that?’
‘This is going to sound like some over-dramatic bullshit, but they’re eating people’s souls – I can’t think of another way to put it.’
Sean looked at Kevin and Hoheria, at Alex too, before turning to Paki.
‘Bet you can’t, bro. That sounds exactly like what nearly happened to me. And tell me, how are the victims around here?’
Paki looked grim. ‘They’re all dead, except for one guy who told us what happened. He had all his feelings sucked up, he said, like the Ponaturi was feeding on him. He managed to fight it off, but I hate to think what’d happen if they got onto one of the kids.’ He looked around the markets. They could see half-a-dozen children, not running and playing, just sitting quietly. They all looked frightened. ‘And what’s your story, anyway?’
‘It was a big bugger,’ Sean said. ‘It would have killed me except Alex hit it for a home run. I know what you mean about eating souls too. This one was boring into me and I was starting to fade out. But Hoheria’s story is more interesting.’ He explained how Hoheria had killed one of the monsters, cracking its head open on the concrete path.
Paki looked amazed. ‘Nobody in this town has been able to hurt them. What’ve you got that nobody else has?’
She shrugged. Kevin looked at her proudly. ‘It’s probably because she’s pure of heart.’
Paki looked sceptical. ‘Good thing somebody is. I’m certainly not.’
‘He isn’t either,’ Cheryl said. ‘But he tries hard.’ She turned to Alex who finished her tea and put the cup down. ‘And what happened with you?’
‘I used a softball bat,’ Alex said. ‘I knocked this thing that attacked Sean into a lavender hedge. That upset it more than anything, the bat or even the shotgun.’ From where they were sitting they had a view across Kahuika, a white sea of fog.
Cheryl shivered. ‘Nobody goes out at night any more,’ she said. ‘The Ponaturi have everyone scared stiff.’ Night after night, members of Cheryl’s family had been scrabbling at her window.
‘I know what they really are,’ she said. ‘But it just tears my heart out to see them. Paki doesn’t have that trouble. I don’t think so, anyway. He won’t say what he sees, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to bother him much.’
‘There’s nobody I miss all that much,’ he said. ‘Only my nanny, and they haven’t cottoned on to her yet.’
Sean took Cheryl’s hand. ‘They’re like vampires,’ he said. ‘They can’t touch you if you don’t invite them in.’
‘Lavender, you reckon?’ Paki said.
‘And clean living,’ laughed Kevin. ‘But you should have seen Hoheria. She cracked this monster’s head open like it was a watermelon. Gunk all over the footpath in the morning.’
‘But no monster,’ said Hoheria. ‘I mightn’t’ve killed it.’
The next time they came to the markets everyone there was wearing lavender sprays. Clumps of lavender were being sold and traded. Even men were wearing lavender oil. Lavender water was being sprayed from old household cleanser bottles.
‘The place smells like my grandmother,’ said Kevin. ‘Like she used to, I mean.’
Paki and Cheryl greeted them from behind a table piled high with drying lavender clumps, pillows and cushions stuffed with lavender, bowls of lavender-smelling pot-pourri. Next to their tent two young boys turned a goat on a spit over a bed of coals. Occasionally one of them tossed on a few sprigs of lavender so that puffs of fragrant smoke rose and mixed with the thin mist that wreathed about the markets.
Paki looked like he had mixed feelings. ‘The idea really took off,’ he said. ‘We haven’t had any serious trouble for ages.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Except I’m sick of the smell already. And they’re still coming around. I can hear them at night. I sometimes see them in the fog during the day. Good thing I can run fast.’
‘What d’you reckon?’ Kevin asked Hoheria when they got back home. ‘Is the trouble over, or what?’
Hoheria looked at him, brown eyes wide with concern. ‘I don’t think so. Paki knows it too. It’s just a quiet patch. But I’ve got a bad feeling. I’m worried about what’s happening in Kahuika, especially with Cheryl and Paki.’
Two weeks later when they rode in to the markets Cheryl was distraught. She was sitting in the rear of their tent, her arms around a frightened small girl with haunted eyes.
‘What happened to you?’ said Alex.
Cheryl and the girl clutched each other. ‘The Ponaturi came back. They killed Tilly.’
‘Tilly? Who’s Tilly?’
Cheryl pulled herself together. ‘This is Desiree,’ she said. ‘Tilly was her friend. It’s horrible what happened.’
Paki took up the story. ‘Desiree and Tilly were staying with us when the Ponaturi came back. They must have gathered outside the window, even though we’d planted a lavender hedge and painted the sill with oil.’
Tilly let them in, Desiree said. They swarmed all over her and the last thing Desiree saw as she fled through the door was Tilly falling to the ground, covered in monsters.
‘Can you take her home with you?’ Cheryl said to Hoheria. ‘She’s too scared to stay in our house. She can’t sleep. She won’t eat.’
‘Sure I can. But I don’t know if she’ll be any safer if the lavender isn’t doing any more than irritate the Ponaturi, and they’re learning that it won’t hurt them. What do you know about her, by the way?’
Paki had found Desiree and Tilly on one of his trips to Ōtepoti and had brought them back with him after seeing the people occupying the old building where they were living. He’d found the girls at the markets in the Octagon, stealing food.
‘Don’t they feed you two at home?’ he’d asked.
‘Not much. They make us do the dishes, though. In cold water. Yuck.’
‘Are they good to you? Do you like them?’
‘Doubt it.’ Desiree and Tilly were both nine, old beyond their years.
‘I’m Desiree’s cousin,’ Paki told the denizens of the old boarding house who he’d found gathered around a bong in the kitchen. ‘Anyone got anything to say about that?’ They’d all looked at each other and at Paki’s towering bulk.
‘Through there,’ one of them said, indicating a room off the kitchen. ‘This isn’t the ideal place for them anyway.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Paki, stepping into the sunroom where he found Desiree sitting on a camp bed wrapped in a blanket, and Tilly perched on a hardbacked chair. Their faces lit up when they saw Paki.
‘We’re all packed,’ Desiree said. She had a pair of jeans and a jumper in her school bag. Tilly had her gear in a small back-pack. There was nobody in the kitchen when they left the house, and when they trotted off after Paki lifted the two girls up behind him, nobody waved goodbye.
‘Bad buggers,’ Paki said to Cheryl later. ‘One of them would have got to the girls eventually.’
When Paki and Cheryl visited that weekend they brought Desiree with them. She was washed and brushed and carried her school bag.
‘I’m going to stay with Auntie Hoheria,’ she told Alex.
‘Actually, you’ll be staying with Uncle Kamisese and Auntie Beatriz,’ Alex said. ‘You’ll love it there. They’re really looking forward to meeting you.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Alex asked Cheryl when Kevin and Paki had taken Desiree around to Kamisese and Beatriz’ place.
‘It’s probably the best thing, but I’m heartbroken,’ said Cheryl. ‘Please don’t let her forget me.’
Alex put an arm around Cheryl’s shoulders. ‘Did you lose any children?’
‘Two,’ Cheryl said. ‘You?’
‘Same.’
‘What do you know about those people where Desiree’s going?’
Alex looked at Cheryl. Kamisese had ridden a mountain bike south from Auckland. Beatriz was a student from Columbia. Desiree would be getting an interesting life.
‘They’ll be good for the girl,’ she said eventually. ‘We’ll keep an eye on her anyway.’ She had a sudden thought. ‘They live next door to Jacqui and Pita. She’ll be spending a lot of time with them, too.’
Before the Ponaturi had come, Alex had a completely surprising run-in with Pita. Up till that point Pita had gone quietly about his business, first helping to bury the town’s original inhabitants, and then trading his considerable carpentry skills for food.
‘Where are you from?’ she’d asked him.
‘Greymouth,’ he’d said. He’d left a boarding house full of dead people and had driven a battered old Holden across the Alps, improvising repairs and cooking gourmet meals on the roadside. By the time he’d arrived in Kokopu Waters he was almost right round the twist, and he was slowly regaining his equilibrium. But Alex could see he still had his moments. Like the time he’d told Alex her portulaccas were planted too close to her black-eyed Susans. They didn’t look quite right, he’d said.
‘Don’t be so bloody picky,’ Alex had told him. ‘No woman wants a man like that. If you’re not careful you’ll end up with some old boiler from under a hedge in Kahuika.’
Nothing more was said, but a week later Pita came home from Kahuika with Jacqui riding beside him.
‘She looks like she’s seen some action,’ commented Sean.
‘Pita’s been looking under hedges,’ said Alex, who immediately regretted her hasty judgement.
Within a week it was clear that Jacqui could hold her own, and that most of Pita’s picky ways were being discarded in the interests of domestic harmony. Pita had a loud voice, but Jacqui’s was louder, and the Kokopu Waters residents were soon being treated to high-volume discussions on the correct way to open curtains and the placement of furniture.
Jacqui had encountered the Ponaturi in Kahuika, and wasn’t in the least put out by the prospect of meeting them again. ‘I’m not afraid of those hungry enzymes,’ she told Sean when he tried to warn her she and Pita had best start working together. ‘Anyway, I know what I’m doing.’
I’m sure you do, thought Sean. And Pita’s finding out the hard way.
Beatriz returned with Sean and Paki. She was holding Desiree’s hand. The young girl wasn’t exactly skipping and laughing, but her eyes were open wide and she looked unafraid.
‘I’m going to live with Beatriz and Kamisese!’ Desiree announced, before throwing her arms around Cheryl. ‘When I’m staying here will you be my auntie?’
Cheryl hugged her back. ‘Of course, dear.’
‘Paki says we’re a great big family. He says it doesn’t matter where we live.’
The next day when they were riding back into Kahuika, Desiree settled in to her new home, Cheryl started crying. Paki reined in his horse, dismounted, and helped Cheryl out of the saddle.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That mightn’t have been such a brilliant idea.’ Cheryl sobbed. The tears streamed.
Paki put an arm around Cheryl’s shoulders. ‘Fuck those little demons. Things are hard enough anyway.’ He helped Cheryl sit on the roadside. ‘Anyway, I think we should try for our own.’ He embraced Cheryl, stroked and patted her.
She pulled free and glared at Paki. ‘It’ll be too bloody late by then.’ She sobbed and snuffled some more. ‘I can see what you’re trying to do, though. You just want what’s best for that girl and I don’t blame you. And I know you’ll do whatever you think is best for me.’ She sniffed. ‘I think I know what I want, too. I really want a baby, and a little kid is the next best thing.’
Paki sat beside her, the early spring grass damp and lush, birds chirruping. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s what I mean. Maybe we should have kept the girl with us. Maybe she’d have gotten over what she was feeling.’ He gave Cheryl a weak smile. ‘We’ll know soon enough, anyway.’
‘I know you’ll do your best,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure everything will work out. At least, I hope so.’
Paki remembered her words a fortnight later. They helped him ignore the warning siren that sounded in his head when he answered a knock at the door late one night. Standing in the candlelight was a small boy, about ten years old, grubby face, too-large coat and an onion-sack pīkau. A pathetic and heart-rending sight.
A little kid for Cheryl, he thought. A child for her to love and look after.