Free The Ghost at the Point by Charlotte Calder Page B

in the drive, when she stood up and walked over to the spot. Slowly, barely breathing, she parted the vegetation.
    Nothing.
    And the sand was so stirred up by numerous possum feet, it was impossible to make out any human tracks.
    She kept pushing her way through, until she was standing on a tiny path. This part of the cliff, above the little cove in front of the house, was not a sheer drop, but covered in bushes, gnarled tea-trees and small crannies and caves.
    Further around a stick snapped. It was followed by the sound of a shower of stones and small rocks. She heard one bounce off a boulder at the bottom and thud onto the beach.
    Her heart pounded painfully in her chest. Were ghosts that clumsy?
    Dorrie continued on, as fast as she dared, in the same direction. The little path was becoming simply boulders and overhangs, and soon she was dislodging stones herself. When she came to a big wall of protruding rock she stopped. Beyond the rock wall, she knew, was a fifty-foot drop to the rockshelf below.
    But she had to find out.
    She inhaled deeply and started climbing, up over the top of the rock wall. Her sweaty hands grasped at flimsy bushes around the side; her toes groped for shallow footholds. And then she was at the top, peeping over the other side.
    There he was. Ten feet away, clinging to the trunk of a tea-tree growing sideways out of the cliff. Wide-eyed and frightened, in a distinctly unghost-like fashion.
    And directly below him was that big drop.
    He cried out to her, a single word. A word she didn’t recognise, something obviously from another language. But the meaning was unmistakable: “Help!”
    “Hold on!” she shouted. “Stay right there.”
    There was nothing he could do
but
stay – he was stuck. He must have taken a wild jump, she thought, to grab onto the tree. His bare toes gripped a tiny ledge in the rock, and some of the roots of the tea-tree were coming away under his weight.
    Dorrie’s stomach lurched. Her fingers gripping rock, she edged closer. Even before she stretched out her arm, she knew she couldn’t reach. Not sideways, nor if she tried from above. And those roots could give way completely at any moment. Any attempt at joining him on his precarious perch would send them both to certain death.
    There was only one thing to do.
    “Hold on!” she cried again, motioning with her free hand. “Wait!”
    The boy stared back at her, a sheen of sweat on his dark skin. He glanced below and gave a little moan.
    “I won’t be a minute.” And then Dorrie was clambering feverishly up the cliff, grabbing bushes and rocks, sending more stones and sand showering down. She reached the top, ran along the verandah and down to the shed. Yanking open the door without any of her usual caution about lurking snakes, she rushed into the gloom and grabbed a long coil of rope from its hook above the bench.
    “I’m coming,” she shouted when she got back. She knotted one end of the rope to one of the thick concrete verandah posts, thankful that the verandah was so close to the edge. The post, like the rest of the house, was crumbling in parts, but compared to the spindly bushes and trees growing out of the cliff face, it seemed her best bet. She looped the other end over her shoulder and started climbing back down.
    She had a sudden fear that he might already have lost his hold and fallen. But when she reached a large jutting rock and looked over, he was still hanging on. His eyes, huge with fear, brightened when they spied the rope.
    “Are you ready?”
    Dorrie steadied herself, gripping a branch, then tossed down the coil of rope. It hit the rock face and slithered down. The boy leaned sideways, grabbing wildly. To Dorrie’s horror, more stones and roots came loose, but all he’d managed to grasp was thin air. The rope hung, swaying gently, a tantalising foot from his outstretched hand.
    “Hang on – I’ll try again.”
    She found a spot further up where she could stand without hanging on and