Forest Secrets (14 page)

‘And there goes Blowhard,' Snook said as his camper disappeared down the camp entrance road, leaving a cloud of red dust behind it. ‘He'll be headin' back to town, I suppose.'

After watching Blowhard's van leave, I turned my attention to Mr Huntingdale's Volvo that had just drawn up. I saw at once that it had passengers; they were sitting in the back, a man and a woman, who looked very old. Doctor Huntingdale, followed by the two elderly people, climbed out of the car. The doctor and the two old folk, both using walking sticks, made their way towards us. I have to say though that I was surprised that there was no Gloria or Quenton Quigley. I could tell Snook wasn't happy about that; funny chicken noises were coming from somewhere in the back of his throat.

I patted Snook on the back in an attempt to make him stop cackling while Doctor Huntingdale, finding it hard not to stare at the policewoman, helped the two old folk over to us.

Constable Sweetman was the first to speak. She told the doctor that she and her sergeant were out on patrol, which was not exactly a fib. It was close to it though, I thought. Then again, I figured she was probably being smart: not explaining further, not having to mention the bones; not yet, anyway; the time wasn't right; there would have been a whole lot of innuendo and guessing if she did. And goodness knows where that may have led.

‘This is Mr and Mrs Cooper,' the doctor told us. He then looked at Snook and me. ‘If you don't mind, they would very much like to talk to you both about their son's disappearance.'

Bells rang in my head. Along with other things, the Coopers would want to know all about the kid – our phantom, the apparition, the ghost … whatever it was. The doctor was making it plain enough. He was certainly interested in what we'd seen. And he would have told Mr and Mrs Cooper about it. There was nothing surer – that's why he and the Coopers were here … to find out as much as possible about our
visions
. That could be awkward. After all, the kid was a mystery to us too. Neither Snook nor I could begin to make sense of the hallucinations – if that's what they were –either, let alone talk to someone else about them.

Mrs Cooper, opening and closing her mouth in a noisy, slurping way, looked stressed. Leaning on her husband's arm for support and pointing her stick at Snook and me, her thin, bony arm shaking, she said, ‘So, you two, what have you got to tell me? Eh? The doctor tells me you've seen Aaron. Is that true? Go on, then. Tell me!' Despite hanging onto her husband, her legs began to wobble and I could see that Doctor Huntingdale wasn't feeling too comfortable with her state of well-being. He kept putting his hand behind her back as if expecting her to fall at any minute.

‘Perhaps we should all sit down,' I said. ‘There are some makeshift seats over by the fireplace.'

‘They'll do fine,' Mr Cooper said, as we all trooped over to the sawn-off stumps. As soon as everyone was seated, Mrs Cooper leaned forward and her gaze fell on Snook and me. ‘Tell us how you two saw our son,' she said, her voice breaking up as if she were going to cry. ‘Don't leave anything out.'

‘Steady, Marge,' her husband said, putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘Don't go getting yourself all worked up. You'll make yourself ill.'

Doctor Huntingdale interrupted. ‘No, no, Mrs Cooper. You've got it slightly wrong. I didn't say that Jars and Snook
had
seen Aaron. I said that they'd seen …
someone
who looked like him. If it had been Aaron, then what they saw would have been some sort of spir … spir …' He couldn't bring himself to say the word. Instead he sat back and dabbed his forehead with a tissue that he'd quickly extracted from the top pocket of his jacket.

‘Fiddlesticks,' Marge Cooper said, her voice high and bird-like now. ‘These youngsters have honest faces. If they
did
see our son, they'd tell us.' Leaning over, she prodded Snook with her cane. ‘You wouldn't lead us up the garden path, would you, sonny?'

I felt sorry for Snook. Mrs Cooper could be quite demanding when she wanted to. His eyes had taken on a wide, incredulous look and his lips had disappeared backwards into his mouth. Eventually recovering from being prodded by an old lady, Snook managed to stammer, ‘Th-that's right, Mrs C-Cooper. I wouldn't lead you up no garden p-path.'

‘There you are, Harry,' she said. ‘What did I tell you?' Waving her stick around in the air and looking at both Snook and me in turn, she said, ‘Can you tell us anything … anything at all?' Shadow, who'd been quiet up until now, let out a whimper and edged close to Mrs Cooper, as though sensing her anguish.

Harry Cooper rolled his eyes. I suspected that he thought the whole exercise – coming out here and talking to us – was a complete waste of time.

Not knowing what else to do and feeling sorry for the Coopers, I took the initiative and told them everything I knew and could remember about our
vision
of the phantom kid – probable age, characteristics, and clothes. At least we were giving them something, even although it wasn't the undeni-able, positive proof that they'd wanted – that their son had somehow come back from the dead. They listened to every word, especially Mrs Cooper, who was sitting on the edge of her seat, and when I'd finished she asked the one question that I didn't want to hear … whether the kid was wearing a ring. I knew that if I told her that he was indeed wearing one, then she'd jump to the conclusion that we
had
seen her son – in the flesh so to speak – and not just a likeness of him. Not knowing that the doctor had already told the Coopers about the ring, I didn't answer her.

‘I remember he had a ring,' Snook said, spoiling my plan. I glared at him but he didn't seem to notice. ‘It was one of those Phantom ones, the kind where if you bash someone on the jaw it leaves a mark. Kids send away for 'em. It's no big deal.'

‘Yes, thank you, Snook,' Doctor Huntingdale said. He must have seen my glare. ‘I think you've made your point.'

‘A lot of kids?' Mrs Cooper persisted. ‘How many would you say had those rings? Generally speaking. Most? Everyone? At your school, for example?'

‘Most of the boys, I'd say. It would have been like when one kid gets somethin', then all the other kids'll suddenly want it too.'

‘Oh, I see,' she said, looking disappointed. ‘Then the ring on the boy that you saw would most likely have been quite common.'

‘Yep, no doubt about it.'

Mrs Cooper struggled to her feet. ‘We were hoping we'd … I'm sorry. I don't really know what we were hoping for.' She tugged at her husband's sleeve. ‘Come, Harry, take me back to the car. We haven't learned anything new.'

Harry pushed himself up from the tree stump. ‘Yes, it's time I got you home.' I watched as the two old folk, holding on to each other, walked slowly back to the car with Shadow trotting by Marge's side.

‘I
told you,' Harry Cooper said as he and his wife sat in the back of the Volvo on the way home. ‘You shouldn't have got your hopes up. Those kids had already told Doctor Huntingdale everything they knew. To tell you the truth, I don't really know what you're after. I mean, Aaron's not suddenly going to appear out of nowhere, is he?'

‘I know that, but if there
was
more information that explained how he disappeared or where he is now, then talking to those two youngsters would have been worthwhile. When I heard about them seeing someone who looked like Aaron, well, I wanted to hear it from them myself. I wanted to look into their eyes when they told me what they knew, and you know what …?'

Sighing, Harry shook his head, wondering what his wife was on about now. Resigning himself to being told, he sat back and waited.

‘That girl was holding back,' his wife said. ‘It was as if she wanted to tell me something but couldn't. She had a look in her eyes like she was dreaming or had a secret.'

‘Now, now,' Harry said, sighing once again. ‘Don't go letting your imagination run away with you. You know what you can be like sometimes.' Doctor Huntingdale couldn't help overhearing as he drove out of the park towards the main road. He asked himself, what have I started? I had no right to tell them about Snook and Jars and their will-o'-the-wisp images. No right at all. Slowing down and moving over to let another oncoming vehicle pass, he did a double take. That's peculiar, he speculated; that's the TYRANOSAURUS REX van that I saw leaving when I arrived at the camp about an hour ago, the one that belongs to that Blowhard fellow; he must have forgotten something.

Reginald Blowhard was still thinking about the two police officers he'd seen passing his camp earlier – man and a woman. Then he'd seen the policewoman plus those two kids pass by again. Something's going on, he said to himself. Either that or the police are just out on a routine patrol. Yes, that could be it, he told himself. Or …? Tossing up whether to turn around and investigate or not, he decided not to. ‘I've had enough of those little horrors,' he said aloud. ‘Enough to last me a lifetime.'

His mind made up, he started to sing along to one of his new recordings, a Doris Day song called,
How Much is that Doggie in the Window?,
when he saw another police car with two plain-clothes officers in it – at the turn-off to the main road where he'd slowed to make the left turn that'd take him to Cray Bay. Intriguing, he thought; something
must
have happened at the camp.

He drew to the side of the road to think about what he had seen when he saw something else. It was those two other kids, on push-bikes; they were coming along the main road, also towards the turn off to the camp. It was the girl with the ponytail and the boy with the camera, the two who were at the campsite yesterday. ‘Mmm,' he said aloud, talking to
Rex
again. ‘I think we'd better investigate after all. Whatever's going on back there looks serious. Maybe the police are going to arrest those two meddling kids. One of them nearly drowned me back there, you know. I ended up soaking wet, but thankfully I had some spare clothes stashed in one of your cupboards.' Executing a U-turn, he followed the second police car's dust towards the gorge camping area.

He passed a blue Volvo that was heading towards the main road, and a few minutes later he arrived back at the camp. ‘Ah hah,' he said, still talking aloud. ‘The two police cars are here, but the camp's deserted. I wonder where everyone's gone. Maybe they're at the lagoon. I'd better find them and see what they're up to.'

He opened the door to get out, and then he hesitated. ‘I'd better not go down to the lagoon and announce that I've changed my mind about leaving. They'd just make fun of me … again. I'd better observe them from a distance. Yes, that's what I'll do, but how?' Then he remembered. There was an old bush road near the camp entrance that could lead to the back of the lagoon. Jumping back into the van, and after patting the steering wheel, he said, ‘We'll have a look along there, Rex. Perhaps we'll see what's going on.'

Turning the vehicle around and the music off, he drove back along the entrance road, and then turned right into the old bush road. And if anyone were to see or hear Reginald Blowhard right then, they'd swear on any bible that he was a madman, talking to his van as if it were a real live person. ‘We're here, Rex. I've navigated correctly once again. We're at the lagoon but we'll have to be very quiet. We don't want anybody to hear us. They'd just make trouble if they did.'

Parking alongside some willows, and after a customary pat on the van's side, he began to follow a well-used track that ran alongside the lagoon. After a short while he heard voices. Keeping low, he moved from the path into the scrub on his left and inched his way forward. Then he saw them. There were two police officers, the two Kelly children and their dog, and walking down towards the group were two other men in plain clothes. One of them was carrying what looked like a camera and the other a cardboard box with a pair of flippers sitting on top. That's the two who were in the police car at the turn-off, Blowhard told himself. The one with the flippers was driving. And here come those other two brats, the girl with the ponytail and the boy with the camera. Blowhard crept forward, watching. This was getting interesting.

S
tanding back, Snook and I watched as the police went about their jobs. The diver, who'd been introduced to us as a Mr Graeme Souter, pulled on a wet suit whilst the photographer, a Mr Percy Stevens, proceeded to take shots of each and every bone that we'd found. Constable Sweetman ran around putting up the barrier tape. Why that was necessary, I couldn't work out. It wasn't as if we were expecting a crowd of people to descend on us. Shadow, enjoying the excitement, ran from one activity to the next, before settling down next to Snook and me. Quenton, who was still looking a bit sulky over yesterday – Gloria hadn't been exactly overfriendly – had dragged Gloria off somewhere to try and find some suitable subjects for his photos.

Shadow had me wondering, though. His ears were wiggling and he kept looking along the track that led to the far end of the lagoon. ‘What's the matter, fella? What's puzzling you?' I knew there was something bothering him; the wiggling ears were always a dead giveaway. Maybe he's catching a whiff of a wallaby or some other wild animal like a quoll; I'd seen tracks in the soft sand near the shore.

My thoughts were interrupted when Percy Stevens called out to the sergeant. ‘Hey, Sarge, I've just finished checking through the bones that the kids found and I'm pretty sure that some of them are human and that they most likely once belonged to a girl. The pelvic bone's got the female curve in it. I thought you'd want to know.'

That was real good news for me – if Percy was correct – that the bones were a girl's. He most probably was correct, I reasoned; after all, in his job, he must have photographed hundreds of bones. Either way, I was pleased; at least one mystery would be solved. I was also doubly pleased that we hadn't told the Coopers about the bones earlier … that we hadn't given them any false hopes. They would have naturally assumed that the human bones were their son's whereas they probably belonged to a girl. Whatever the outcome, I still wondered whose skeleton it was. Who was the girl … or boy
?