Moon Mask (87 page)

You idiot!
He cursed himself.
You’re scaring yourself with your own ghost stories!

Of course, the legend of the Phantom Canoe was rife among the communities near to the lake. Even the pakehas had been sucked into the superstitious nonsense. Sceptics had suggested that the phenomenon had been caused by a freak wave, created by the seismic activity. Others suggested that a burial waka, containing the remains of a dead chief tied in the upright position, had been dislodged. But the legend persisted.

“Locals believe that the
Waka Wairua
, the Spirit Canoe,” he said, dropping his voice as though his words might offend the spirits, “had been a harbinger of the coming doom and, they still believe that if it is seen on the lake again, it would be signalling another coming disaster. So,” he forced a smile, not wanting to totally terrify his party of tourists, “if you happen to see a war canoe heading towards us, please let me know because I intend to get the hell out of here!”

He laughed at his own little joke, his group joining in a bit too animatedly than the comment warranted. When their laughter became a little more raucous, Rawiri noticed them looking off into the gloom of the mist-shrouded interior of the lake, pointing. A few took out digital cameras and began snapping images. But, before he turned, he glanced at Tipene and Rui at the back of the boat. Their hands still clutched their oars, their knuckles turned white. Their faces had drained of all colour and their eyes stared, wide and fearful, at something behind him.

Rawiri turned slowly, fearing whatever he was going to see. His eyes pierced the blue pall of the heavy mist. It had swallowed them up now, closed like a draw-string, or a noose perhaps, around them. Despite the summer heat, he felt suddenly cold as his eyes fixed on the silhouette of an intricately carved Maori war canoe. Three ghostly figures sat within and a low, solemn song carried upon the air. And then, as quickly as they had appeared, the warriors and their waka were swallowed once more by the ethereal mist.

One by one, the excited babble of the tour group dropped silent as they realised that the waka’s almost on-cue appearance had not been part of some elaborate hoax or a prearranged part of the tour.

Rawiri’s own thoughts about his sins and the demon Tamaohoi came flooding back to him, as did his ominous warning. “
An eruption could occur any time. . . Maybe it’s already starting beneath our feet as we speak.
”

He was about to order Tipene and Rui to start paddling for shore when he felt a sudden rocking in the hull of the boat beneath his feet. The water around them suddenly began to ripple as small bubbles popped to the surface. Tipene and Rui didn’t need to be told. They thrust their oars into the water and with powerful strokes began to push through the lake but the mist was so thick now that Rawiri couldn’t see the shore.

“What’s going on?” someone demanded.

“Everyone stay calm.” He tried to make his own voice sound calm but then realised it was bordering on panic. All about them, the bubbles grew larger and came more frequently until the entire surface of the lake seemed to roil around them. The waka shook violently as Rawiri took a paddle and thrust it into the water to help Tipene and Rui- left then right, left then right!

“Hold on!”

A large wave, two feet high, slammed into the bow of the canoe, spraying up and over him. The tourists screamed.

“The water’s boiling!” one of the British girls shouted.

It was an exaggeration. The water wasn’t quite boiling, but it was certainly hot, like the temperature of a very hot bath. Far hotter than it usually was and, he feared, it would only get hotter!

They had to get to shore, but which way was it?

A high pitched scream snapped his attention back to his party. A Japanese woman was pointing at something in the water only ten yards away. Rawiri looked and gasped. It was a body! Had he lost someone overboard? No, they were all still there.

He considered ignoring the ghastly emergence but then his conscience kicked in. He shouted at Tipene and Rui and all three of them began paddling towards the body. It looked lifeless, dead perhaps, but he had to be sure. The water churned all around it, making the limp limbs dance like a sick puppet.

They hauled the waka to a stop beside this new apparition and he leaned over the side of the boat. Tipene and two of the tourists helped to pull the dead weight from the water and roll the body- a man with black hair and piercing blue eyes staring wide and lifeless- into the boat.

As suddenly as the thrashing water had struck, it began to ease, the bubbles diminishing and the waves fading into nothingness. It was as though the water wanted nothing more than the extraction of the foreign body from the water.

“Get us back to shore!” he nevertheless ordered Tipene and Rui. “Has anyone got a phone on them? Good. Call an ambulance!” Then, as the boat began moving quickly through the mist, hopefully in the direction of the shore, he returned his attention to the body lying in the middle of the canoe. The tourists had scrambled disgustedly away from it and Rawiri understood why. Even as he felt for a pulse, he noticed the bruising and the cuts and grazes that had torn his clothing and his flesh.

“Wait,” one of the tourists said. “He looks familiar.”

As if jogging everyone else’s memories, several of the others nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I’ve seen him before.”

“But where?”

“He was on the news!” someone else said urgently.

“That’s it.” Then a gasp of horror. “I know who he is!”

“He’s that terrorist! The one who blew up that American ship in the Pacific last year!”

“What was his name . . ?”

“Raine!”

“That’s it. Nathan Raine!”

Rawiri frowned as he looked up at the tourist group surrounding him. What was a terrorist doing in the middle of the lake? Was the strange activity a precursor to an eruption? And what about the Spirit Canoe? He had no idea what was going on.

The only thing he knew for certain, as he took his fingers off the man’s neck, was that Nathan Raine was dead.

      
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Richardson works at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, where he is surrounded by inspirartion-inducing objects everyday. He is a keen traveler, having journeyed to over twenty countries in search of inspiration and settings for his novels.

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