Bakers Rock (1/2)

Six people alone for a year on a tiny island in the South Pacific: what could go wrong? Well, lots of things. I’d made a long list of potential disasters before I even went there because I like to be prepared for the worst. Running out of food, being caught in a tsunami, hypothermia, anaphylactic shock…I had a detailed contingency plan for all of those things. The one event I hadn’t included on that list was murder.

When Katie called us all to a team meeting, I knew instantly that one of us had died. You just know in that situation, there’s a stillness in the air. But I thought it would be Shelley. She’d talked often enough about wanting to end it all because of that chick. At one point we’d all been taking turns to watch over her—none of us wanted to answer to her partner back in Auckland.

But it wasn’t Shelley, it was Ian.

The funny thing is, everyone hated Ian. I guarantee that every single one of us had fantasized about killing him at some point. I know I’d personally wanted to strangle him several times. He thought he was hot shit and barely a minute went by when he wasn’t rubbing one of us up the wrong way. He boasted about being in the Paras in Northern Ireland and the Falklands. He had cute little nicknames for each one of us. Wiremu was ‘the darkie’, Shelley ‘the lezzie,’ Fern ‘the dippy hippie’, Katie ‘feminazi’, Rob ‘the BTK killer’ and I was ‘anal Jane’ because I like detailed plans. As you can probably guess, he was a bully. He was also the only one of us who really enjoyed killing animals. Shelly told me she thought he was the one who’d broke her chick’s neck, and I’m sure it’s possible. It’s the kind of thing he’d think was funny.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name’s Jane Moore and I work in conservation. About three years ago I was part of a task force sent to Bakers Rock, an island somewhere between New Zealand and Anatarctica that is so small you will not find it on any map. The cool thing about this place is that it’s the only place where fire-crested gannets come to breed and raise their chicks. In recent years their number had been declining and a research team found that it was because rats had been introduced and were eating the eggs.

We were there to kill the rats. There were a few other scientific tasks but that was basically it. We arrived by boat because there was not enough room for a landing strip and it was too far from land for a helicopter. We had a stock of food that had to last us for three months, when another boat would bring more supplies.

There we were, six rat killers in a little hut on a cold rock in the middle of nowhere. When I think about it now, it seems obvious someone was going to die.

I feel like it all started to go wrong when Shelly found the chick. For whatever reason, its parents didn’t return to the nest. Shelly noticed and sat next to it for a whole day. Then she took it on herself to adopt it. She called him Riley, brought him into the hut and took care of him round the clock. She became so caught up in caring for him that she stopped doing her ordinary work. It was against the rules, of course bu most of us didn’t mind taking up the slack—after all, there wasn’t that much to do. Ian, of course, kept grumbling about it.

About a week in Riley seemed to be sick and stopped thriving. Shelley was so worried that she lost sleep. Katie, who had taken on the role of Camp Mother, told Shelley to get some rest and she’d look after Riley for a few hours. Well, some time that night when Katie was in the outhouse for five minutes, someone took Riley outside and wrung his neck.

Katie found him and went straight to Shelley to let her know.

That was it. Shelley lost her mind. She physically attacked Katie, then broke down crying for a whole day. To me, that was a normal kind of grief. But then she turned into Zombie Shelley—almost catatonic. She didn’t talk to anyone, didn’t eat, didn’t wash. Sometimes you could hear her muttering to herself, “All my fault, all my fault…” When she started talking about wanting to ‘join Riley’ Katie set up a schedule to keep an eye on Shelley.

When I think about who killed Riley, it seems pretty clear it was Ian. There were some smug looks and cryptic phrases: “Nature culls the weak”, “We’re here to save the species, not an individual”, “If you can’t take the pain don’t play the game”… I just knew in my bones that he’d done it and sometimes it was hard to physically be in the same room with him.

This was all maybe three weeks before he disappeared.

In that time, the combination of sleep deprivation, tension, anger and isolation took its toll. Each one of us reacted in our own particular way. Katie mothered Shelley a bit like Shelley with Riley—she felt guilty that she’d let Shelley down, I think. Rob went AWOL—taking long walks and doing most of the work on the other side of the island to get away from the rest of us. Fern also sought refuge in the bush to do her drawing; she was a talented artist and drew plants, I think that was her version of finding peace (not that it is ever truly peaceful in the midst of a colony of nesting seabirds). Wiremu played his guitar, I think partly as a way to mellow the mood. He’s quite a sensitive dude and I think our fighting got to him sometimes. I dealt with my tension by taking charge of the paperwork, making order out of chaos. The only one who didn’t really change was Ian, except that he seemed a bit more of a jerk than usual.

We were all in the lounge together one night after dinner and I decided to get the day’s paperwork done.

“Ian, have you written up your report for today? I can type it up now if you like.”

“No, J-anal, I haven’t.”

“Ian, that’s not her name,” Katie snapped. “It’s Jane.”

“That’s what I said. Jane – L,” he drawled

I rolled my eyes.

“Fern, what about you?” I asked.

She was gazing out of the window at the sea, which was grey and seemingly infinite. At first I thought she hadn’t heard me but then she produced a folder and handed it over to me.

“Nothing in the traps today,” she said.

“Did you check them all?” Katie asked.

She hesitated for a second before nodding.

“Yes.”

“That’s funny,” said Ian in a nasty voice.

“What’s funny?” Katie asked, in her dangerously reasonable voice.

“I had a look into one of your traps this afternoon. It had sprung.”

Fern glared at him.

“What were you doing in my area?”

He shrugged.

“Just happened to be passing through. Good thing, too, as it happened. Can’t trust a dippy hippy to count things, can we?”

Wiremu picked up his guitar and started strumming and humming the song “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.”

“Can you play something that isn’t a negro song for once?” Ian asked.

“What does that mean?” Wiremu asked. He stopped playing abruptly. “What would you prefer, mate?” he asked.

“I like something with a bit of beat, a bit of life to it. Like the Rolling Stones.”

“Ian, try not being a munter for half a second will you?” I sighed.

“Calm down J-anal,” he smirked.

“Wiremu, please keep playing that song,” said Shelley in a small voice, “I really like it.”

We listened to Wiremu play for a while, retreating into our own thoughts.

The door opened and Rob came in, bringing a gust of cold air with him. He was tall and had let his beard grow so he looked something like a viking, except he was wearing shorts and a red-and-black Swanndri.

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” said Ian, “BTK himself.”

Rob looked at him contemptuously for a moment then announced to the room.

“Storm coming. I’d say it’s about half an hour away. We’d better shut the windows and doors.”

“Shit, I’d better get the washing in! Jane, can you gizza hand?” Katie leaped up.

“Yep,” I said. Any excuse to get out of Ian’s company.

The sheets were flapping in the breeze. Katie beckoned to me to join her behind a sheet.

“I found this near the back door,” she said and held up a piece of paper. It was one of Fern’s drawings. She’d done a good job of capturing the small, spiky flower of the Acaena Magellanica.

“Not bad!” I said.

“There’s something written on the back,” she said. “Look.”

She turned the page over and I stared at it, uncomprehending.

“It looks like some kind of code. Do you know what it says?” I asked.

Katie looked worried.

“I don’t know, but it’s weird. And Fern’s been acting strangely lately too. As much as I hate Ian, he’s got a point. She has been skipping her trap checks. That’s why I asked her just now. I had to remind her last week.”

“What do you think it means?”

“I’m not sure,” she shook her head. “God knows. If it’s a psychotic break…I don’t know if I could handle that and Shelley at the same time. Look, don’t tell her I showed you this, OK? It’s probably nothing. I want to talk to her about it first.”

“Of course,” I said. I felt a big cold splat of rain on my head and remembered we were here to get the washing.

The storm came in when we’d all gone to bed for the night and I felt comforted by it somehow. Above all things, I like being wrapped up cosy in bed while the weather is raging outside. Not that it was that cosy—I still had to wear my thermals, three pairs of socks, my balaclava and my super-thick sleeping bag. Cosy enough though. When I woke up, the rain and wind had stopped. It was so eerily quiet that I sat bolt upright in bed, my heart pounding. I was immediately convinced that something was horribly wrong.

Looking back on it, I figure there must have been audible cues. After all, I was already on tenterhooks and slept lightly because of the Shelley situation. In any case, I threw on my dressing gown and went to the living room thinking I’d do a puzzle or make hot chocolate or something to calm down.

As soon as I turned on the light I let out a shriek. I couldn’t help it. I nearly died of fright. Next to the window was Wiremu, sitting bolt upright on a chair with his eyes wide open, staring ahead of him. Then he stood up and walked slowly towards me…and then past me, then into the corridor. He made no sign at all of having seen me.

I realized then, of course, that he was sleepwalking. He’d told us he suffered from it sometimes, and suggested that we keep the front doors locked at night because wandering around high cliffs might be dangerous. I heard him go into his bedroom but decided to check the front door anyway. That’s when I found out that it was unlocked. Almost automatically, I locked it. Then I went back through the living room, into the kitchen and turned the kettle on.

The kitchen was where the back door was. Imagine my surprise when it opened suddenly and Shelley came in, drenched and shivering.

When I’d recovered from the shock, I went to grab some old towels for her.

“Bloody hell, how long were you out there for, ya loon?”

“A few hours. I like the wild weather, all Wuthering Heights,” she grinned.

“Whatever floats your boat, I guess,” I shrugged. I was glad to see her with a bit of sparkle, though. That was new. “Did you go out the front door?” I asked.

“No, back door, why?” she asked.

“Wiremu’s sleepwalking and the front door was unlocked. I was worried he might end up having an accident or something.”

“Oooh, it’s spooky when he does that, isn’t it?” she giggled. “He talks in his sleep, too, you know.”

“He does?”

“Yes. Kind of dark stuff sometimes. You wouldn’t know it, he seems so gentle when he’s awake but he comes up with some violent stuff. One night I was out here looking after Riley and he was sleep walking. I didn’t know it so I just started talking to him and he got really angry. He said if I gave him any more lip he’d give me a hiding. It sounds funny now but I’ve never seen anyone that angry.”

I shivered.

“Well, na-night!” she said cheerily and went back to her bedroom.

I was finally drinking my hot chocolate in the lounge, looking out the window into darkness when suddenly I saw the startling, searing progress of a flare in the night sky. And I heard the silence burst into a cacophony of bird shrieks.

“What the…” My heart sank. It was at that moment I knew that there was something, someone out there.