Keepers of the Lost City

13 The Clash at Nekenhalle

The police arrived at the Cockran farm an hour later. They apologized for the tardiness of their response.

“I’m sorry we only get here now, Mr. Hardi… Dr. Harding,” the sergeant said, meeting the veterinarian and the farmer in front of the Cockrans’ gate entrance. He looked at his notebook to make sure that he addressed the man correctly. “It was a bit of a struggle to find the farm. No GPS works here, really.”

“I know,” Cecil sighed in agreement. “I’m just glad you are here.”

The sergeant looked like a respectable fellow, a native descendant, while his sidekick was a reserved blond constable by the name of Const. Heather Ballin. “I’m Sgt. Anaru, this is Const. Ballin. Now, you reported two men missing here?”

Cockran shook his head, standing with his arms crossed over his chest in the late afternoon sun. For once, he kept quiet and allowed the veterinarian to state his case.

“Not here. Up at Nekenhalle Farm,” Cecil corrected him eagerly. He was in a hurry to get back to his father’s house before dark, but he knew cops were reluctant to move until their precious statements had been satisfactorily filled in. “My father and brother are missing and I believe there are burglars in the house. I heard them smashing up stuff and shifting furniture.”

The sergeant took down his statement as he spoke, and then he looked up at the complainant. “Did you confront the burglars, sir?”

“No,” Cecil frowned. “What if they shoot me? That is why I called you.”

The police officer shrugged a little restlessly at the discrepancy in the man’s claim. “Alright, sir, but if you did not confront them, how do you know that it was not your father and brother inside the house?”

Cecil was caught between defeat and frustration, but he knew that letting his temper flare would be counter-productive, or even have him sleeping in the cells that night. “Because, Sergeant, I called their names over and over and shouted for them several times. If it was them in the house, surely they would answer me.”

“Maybe did not hear you, if they made so much noise in the house,” he persisted, working Cecil’s frail tolerance to its fullest.

“Sergeant, could you please just have a look? I mean, you came all this way anyway, so you may as well go back there with me. Please? Just please come back there with me.”

The sergeant gave the request some thought, and replied, “I don’t see why not. Let’s go have a look. Constable, call this in to dispatch. Mr. Har… Dr. Harding, you drive ahead and we’ll follow, alright?”

“Sure, sure,” Cecil beamed. He smiled at the old farmer, who gave him a wink.

“I’m still not going up there with you,” old Nigel told Cecil as the officers got into their 4x4 vehicle. “You are welcome to stay another night, though, if that means anything.”

“That sounds very good, Nigel, thank you,” Cecil accepted the invitation. “See you later. I hope.”

After a short ride, the police car and the SUV pulled up to the perpetually intimidating gates of Nekenhalle. When Cecil got out of his car, he found the police officers still seated in their car.

‘Oh, don’t tell me they are also refusing to go up there,’ he thought.

“Well?” he asked.

The sergeant looked at Cecil with surprise. “Aren’t you going to open the gate, mate?”

“Oh!” Cecil exclaimed. “No, you see, I don’t have the key. We have to scale the gates to get in.”

“You expect us to trespass, then,” the sergeant scoffed. He was amused, but he was not going to be made a fool of. “Come on, mister, open the gates. We have other calls to attend to, so we don’t have time for this, alright?”

“I am not playing games with you, sergeant, I swear!” Cecil genuinely assured him. “We have to climb over. My father has the key, no doubt, but since he seems to have disappeared, I have no way of opening the gate for you.”

“You climbed this gate?” he asked Cecil.

“I did, twice,” he nodded.

The sergeant laughed and nudged his subordinate with his elbow. “If he can climb it, we can, hey?”

She chuckled and gave him a nod. “Yes, we can, sir.”

Cecil did not even mind the tasteless stab at his physical appearance. He just wanted them to do what he called them for. After the three of them conquered the mighty, rusty malice they started up the driveway.

“This place has a real atmosphere, hey, Dr. Harding,” the constable remarked.

“How do you mean?” he asked, pretending to be oblivious.

“I don’t know,” she smiled dreamily as their footsteps crunched into the black soil. “Even with the beauty of the blue forget-me-not’s, it feels as if the ground is alive, somehow, like it is a magnet that is tugging at the water in our bodies or something.”

“That’s deep, Constable,” the sergeant teased her.

“I agree with you, ma’am,” Cecil answered. “You have no idea how accurately you have just summed up this whole place.”

Halfway up they all began to tire a little, and conversation was more sporadic while their footsteps seemed to sound pronounced in the desolation of the farm. The sound made Cecil feel depressed — a lonely, blunt cadence that reminded him of isolation in a parallel universe.

“It is kind of spooky,” she said as she surveyed her surroundings.

“Of course it is,” the sergeant agreed. “This is Nekenhalle.”

From that apparently insignificant and concise statement, Cecil instantly felt his skin crawl. “Why do you say that?” he asked the sergeant. The tall, strong built Maori chuckled and sized up the ignorant stranger.

“You don’t know about Nekenhalle’s reputation, Doctor?” he asked. “And you, Constable?”

They both shook their heads. The constable took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her perspiring brow. As if the earth under them could understand, the wind died halfway up the road and the sudden silence added to the sergeant’s narration.

“Well, the place is said to be cursed. I know. I know what you think. Always curses. But this place was not a farm when my forefathers lived round here,” Sergeant Anaru shrugged. “I don’t know much of what it was before it was a gold mine, but what I do know is that people always disappeared around this place.”

He looked up at the hole in the mountain rock, his eyes as black as the sand. It was then that Cecil truly spotted the Maori in the officer. Apart from the fact that he spoke English, he resembled some ancient native storyteller to a T. His dark eyes were ablaze with knowledge and with his curly black hair brushing at his collar, there was an awesome wildness about the sergeant.

“The Maori tribes never set foot here. Why would they? We never cared about gold like the Europeans did. The chiefs always said, if you want gold from that mountain, go get it. It’s free to take, but how you get it out is your business alone. My great grandfather always called it Sin Mountain,” Sgt. Anara laughed.

“Why?” the constable asked, while the veterinarian also looked at him inquisitively.

“Because, he explained to us, the mountain was like sin,” the sergeant clarified. “It is yours to commit as much as you want, as often as you want, but in the end, the only one suffering for it, is you.”

“Ha! That is a good analogy,” Cecil exclaimed in approval. “Really, that is a good one. Makes a lot of sense, after what I heard about the mountain eating people.”

The officer looked impressed. “Oh, you know about that creepy reference! Always scared me when I was a little pisser, but I suppose that is what people dream up when they live out here in the wops, hey?”

“Um, sir?” the constable addressed her superior, stopping in her tracks. She was looking up at the mountain, and pointing to an upper window of the house. “What is that?”

The men carried on walking a few more steps, but also halted when they saw what Ballin had noticed. Up, by the blackened mouth of the mine, an old rusty Agritec tractor was slowly being dragged inside.

“Holy shit,” Cecil gasped. “What could be that strong? Look at that!”

Coolly, the sergeant replied, “I see it.”

From where they stood in the road, the old tractor moved sideways, appearing to slide deeper into the dark chasm. Its wheels had been slashed for years and its engine and gears so eroded, that there was no way for it to roll into the entrance. The thing that terrified the three onlookers most was that they could not see what it was that moved the heavy steel vehicle.

“It is sliding,” the constable speculated. She looked at the men, asking, “A mudslide, perhaps?”

Both shook their heads. “There has not been any rain for weeks up here. I know, because Nigel Cockran told me. That cannot be a mudslide, Const. Ballin. No way. Besides, that tractor has been standing there since I first got here, dead still, in its place. Why would it start sliding now?”

“I agree,” the sergeant concurred. “But I am just as worried about that, though. Heather, pull your sidearm. This is all sorts of wrong, behind that window.”

The two officers pulled their guns from their holsters and, with the weapons pointing downward, they started up the last part of the road.

“Stay here,” Sgt. Anaru told Cecil, who was happy to oblige. “Come on, Constable.”

Cecil peered up at the window where there was movement inside. The drapes impaired his ability to see what was within, but by the looks of the motion, someone was dragging the curtain with him as he moved slowly from right to left.

The police officers mounted the deck of the veranda and quietly took positions on either side of the front door. Behind the house, the tractor creaked loudly, disappearing from sight. With faces twisted in concentration, the sergeant and constable nodded at the same time, counting down their next action. Sgt. Anaru mouthed, ‘One, two, three!’

With a mighty crash they kicked in the door, splitting the lock side plank from the rest of the door under the force of their kicks. The door glass shattered on impact, dousing their identification cries from where Cecil was standing. He saw the curtain upstairs whip wildly, and then it fell back limply into its original position.

“They are coming down, officer!” Cecil screamed, keeping his eye on the mouth of the mine for good measure. If they were the accomplices of whoever hid in the mine, the terrific pandemonium of the charging officers would prompt them to confront them downstairs. “Sergeant! Hurry back out!” he warned hysterically, but it was too late. The house erupted in a mad noise of crashing glass and thumps that compelled the veterinarian to run to their aid, even though he was unarmed.

“Sergeant! Constable!” he shouted as he ran with all he could muster to get to the house, looking around hastily for anything that could pass as a weapon. On his way past the garage where Gary’s car gathered dust, he grabbed a small container containing paint thinners. Cecil picked took a broken broomstick he found in the dirt between the cans of spilled paint. Like a valiant hero, he ripped off his shirt to wrap the fabric around the stick.

Gunshots clapped inside the house among orders shouted by Sgt. Anaru. Shaking profusely in this moment of intensity, Cecil poured the thinners on the material and lit it with a match from the box he had in his trousers.

A hot lapping flame grew from the charred shirt and Cecil faced the disorderly commotion he was about to join in.