Kakepuku Catastrophy

Kakepuku Catastrophy Day 1 We were slowly driving along the cold gloomy road, heading for kakepuku. There was nothing to be seen ahead of us apart from the foggy peaks of the mountain. We pulled up in the empty car park and we got off the bus and sat in our groups. Our parents had set off from Hamilton in one car but they were no where to be seen. Mysteriously Mr. Woody had noticed that the bbq tables had gone and that the DOC signs had disappeared as well, but we decided to head on up the mountain leaving behind a group of kids who insisted on staying behind and waiting for the parents. As we climbed up the dark mountain we noticed that there was a lot more trees and bush. Not only that but the fences had gone and so had the cows that had been living here for years. We got to the first look out in the map but there was no platform in sight - suddenly we heard a bird calling. At first we thought it was a Kakapo but we later found out that it wasn’t. It was the sound of a Huia. I felt my heart beat faster as Mr. Woody told us that that the Huia is extinct. This made our trip even weirder but we soldiered on up the mountain. As time passed it got towards lunch time so we settled down on a flat area where we ate our lunch. While we were eating Mr. Woody was acting a little bit weird, I think he is going crazy. He is looking around at the trees and giggling at all the birds. He is not concentrating at the safety rules at all. OH NO!!! Is it just my imagination or has Emily W wandered off? It’s not my imagination where has she got to? This just got even worse, while we were worrying about Emily W, Mr. Woody has disappeared as well. This could not get any worse but of course it did. Ahead of us we saw a path. Well what we thought was a path but it was a track that was split into 3 different path ways. But the far right one was just an animal track. Our class did the worst thing possible we all split up! Some went looking for Emily W the rest of us split into different groups and we headed off down the paths. Savannah, Marissa, Emily.R, Ella, Ashley and I headed down the left path. We started heading down when suddenly we heard some voices but they weren’t your normal every day voices. It sounded like men’s, women’s and kids voices but they were speaking another language. Ella and I freaked out so we went back the way we came while the others carried on. It started to get damp and long black clouds were coming ahead of us. Then suddenly we heard some rustling noises. They got closer and closer until we pulled back a fern and Oh my gosh! Sitting there huddled up was Emily W and Cecelia. But wasn’t Cecelia one of the ones that waited for the parents and didn’t Emily W walk off? They must have found each other and now we found them. Well at least we’re in a bigger group now. As night fell and it grew darker we started to get scared. Then Cecelia noticed something, there was a long tunnel right next to where we were sitting. It was covered in mud and bush. We decided to leave it ‘till the morning before we fully checked it out. In the distance we started to hear cries of help so we started to yell back. We asked who it was and then soon enough the faces of Zac, Brenda and Joelle popped around the bush. I sighed with relief; our group now had 7 people in it. It started to get dark and damp. I started to get colder and so did the others so we decided to make a fire. Zac and Emily W went looking for bark off the Rimu tree and any small dry sticks or leaves on the forest bottom. They were slitting the trees with Zac’s knife so they know how to get back. Mean while Cecelia and I decided to go looking for the ferns of the Mamaku tree. They were just an ordinary fern that you could find in the bush. We collected them so we could put them on the floor of the tunnel where we were going to sleep. Cecelia and I returned to the camp first. This was weird because we left after the other group but we just assumed that they would come back soon. At the camp Joelle, Brenda and Ella had found some small rocks and made a circle where the fire was going to be. Me and Cecelia covered a small area in the tunnel with the ferns and covered the entrance with a small blue tarpaulin. Finally Zac and Emily.W returned with heaps of bark and leaves. We put a small amount of the leaves and bark on the fire and stored the rest next to the tunnel. Joelle lit a match and placed in on the fire. We now had our own fire. We sat around the fire and talked about what had happened and how we all found each other. There were some dark rain clouds that crept up on us and there was a small breeze so we all decided to go to bed. Zac found a possum hole near by so he decided to go and sleep in that but us girls slept in the tunnel. Ella crawled in first then me and Joelle. Emily W hesitated about coming in but she came in, then Brenda and Cecelia follow and we all went straight to sleep. In my dreams there is a lot of scratching noises and I could see shadows. Day 2 Yawn!!!! I was he first one to wake up. I had a small pain in my back but I stretched it out slowly. It didn’t take long for the others to wake but wait a minute, where is Cecelia and Brenda. They may have gone for a walk or maybe they had been kidnapped. We talked amongst ourselves deciding what to do. It would have been easy for them to walk off, but who would kidnap them? I mean it’s not like some one else in our class would sneak up and capture them in their sleep. Twenty minutes later we decide to carry on down the long, dark, dirty tunnel not feeling very confident. We pull our bags on our backs and crawl down. Before you knew it Emily was screaming “help me, Ohh, Argh”. Ella looked back at me and rolled her eyes. I turned my head back and said “toughen up”. Emily grunted at me. Time passed. My knees were engraved with sticks and stones. I could hear the sound of my bag zip scraping on the top of the hard grey rock on the tunnel. Ella, Joelle and I kept crawling and we thought that Emily was following us, until we came to the end of this one way tunnel where it split into two different tunnels. We decide to go down the left one. At the time we did not know that Emily had fallen behind us and scraped her knee. We kept on going down the tunnel. It started to get wetter and damper as we went along. The tunnel also got larger and larger until we could stand up in it. I yelled out to Emily and asked “what’s the time?” There was no reply so I turned my head and she wasn’t there. At this moment I realized that something weird was going on……………people had gone missing, weird sounds were being heard, and things had gone missing. But I didn’t let it get to me. Ella, Joelle and I kept walking down the tunnel. It started to go down hill until a small patch of light shone ahead of us. It got larger and brighter the further we walked until a dark black lake with a rock in it stood ahead of us, and on that rock was a small woven basket. When Joelle caught up with us we took a closer look at the dark black river but we couldn’t see anything dangerous, so I pulled my bag tighter onto my back and dived in. I felt my bag pulling me down but I kept on swimming until I reached the rock. I pulled myself up the rock and rung out my hair. I then turned around and yelled at Joelle and Ella saying “it’s all clear, come on”. Ella hesitated but they both eventually jumped in and started swimming. As Joelle pulled herself up onto the rock I could see that Ella was struggling. All of a sudden I could see ripples of water coming towards her then long, fat, slimy eels broke the surface of the water. A high pitched scream came out of my mouth. I went into a panic. I grabbed my rope out of my bag and threw it to Ella. Just then the eels wound themselves around her leg and pulled her under the water. She came back and up and grabbed onto the rope and I managed to pull her in. I remember the scissors in my first aid kit so I cut the rope in half and secure it around the top of Ella’s legs. We wrapped her in a blanket and tried to calm her down. I took a step back, the water in my shoes squashed down but that wasn’t the only thing that I felt. It was the woven box. I lent over and opened the box and a small puff of smoke blew in my face. I sat up and peered into the box but there was nothing in there. It was at this point that I started to feel light headed. I felt like the world around me was whizzing around. After I had got over my “world spinning around in my head” scene, I felt heroic, brave and strong and that nothing could stop me. Not only that, but dark brown hairs started to grow all over my body. My hands and feet started to grow into mustard coloured hooves! And what do you know right before your eyes I transformed into a faun. I heard Joelle scream at the top of her lungs. I reassured her that it was OK and that it wouldn’t hurt her. I lent back into the box and peered in. At first I saw nothing, and then a small image appeared. I could see that Emily had turned into a spider and Zac was getting attacked by possums. I could see kids from our class sitting around a fire eating eels then falling asleep. This is weird…………I could see everything and anything just through a woven box. “Joelle look at this” I yelled. I told her to look into the box but she saw nothing. I then picked up the box and placed it into my backpack. Well, this is great I thought to myself. I have turned into a faun, Ella has been bitten by eels all over her legs and well, Joelle is just Joelle! I turned around. I saw a long black hole where we came out of right in front of me. I turned back around again. Ahead of me I saw a gap where the sun was beaming through the trees. “We must carry on” I told Ella and Joelle. They agreed but said “how will we get over the water again to the other side?” I replied “don’t worry”……….. I pulled Ella onto my back. I was just about to make the jump of my life. I looked behind me and saw a tunnel.. I turned my head I saw a nice calm place. Is it worth the risk? We could get hurt. Thoughts like this were racing through my mind but I took a couple of steps back and off I went and took a huge leap, making it to the other side. I thought to myself “Yes, I made it”. I placed Ella down on the ground and leapt back to Joelle. I pulled her on to my back. I did the same thing as before except this time I felt confident (maybe too confident!). I leapt over but we didn’t quite make it. We slid down the rocks. The eels came straight for us. Joelle screamed. I screamed. We tried to scramble up the rock but one eel had grabbed onto my hoof. I kicked it off and we both made it to safety. Joelle said “that was lucky”. I agreed with her. I put Ella on my back with Joelle and we looked for some where to sit down and set up a camp. After about 20 minutes of walking we found a spot where the sun was shining. I put Joelle down and had a look around. I could see a log that we could sit on and with all my might I pushed it over to where the girls were sitting. Joelle told us that she was going to find some sticks and stones so she could start a fire. While Joelle was gone I pulled out my first aid kit and got out the things I needed to help Ella with her eel bites. We found some antiseptic cream that would help to draw the bugs out of the wound and Ella secured it with bandages. Just as we finished this, Joelle returned with the gear we needed for the fire. Joelle put all the stones in a circle on the ground then placed the sticks on top. She asked me for a match from my bag so I pulled one out for her. As I did this I noticed that there was a small spider hole next to my bag, I peered into it but I couldn’t see any thing so I just ignored it for now. Joelle lit the match and placed it on the fire. Once it started to get bigger and warmer we huddled around it and tried to keep ourselves warm. We were all damp, cold and wet. I thought to my self “how could a simple class field trip go so horribly wrong?” All of a sudden a small black furry spider ran across the ground straight from his hole and it headed for Joelle. Luckily none of us were too scared of it until it bit Joelle. Joelle now got scared of it she started to scream but she also started to transform. Her skin started to turn black, she started to shrink and she had little black hairs all over her body. That’s right Joelle had just turned into a little, black furry spider right before our eyes. She then with no hesitation scuttled away down the spider hole with the other spider. I swiveled around and started to dig in the hole to try and get them back but it was too late. The hole seemed never ending and they would be way down deep into the earth by now. Now there were only two of us left in our group. Poor Ella who has been bitten by eels and well I am just an ugly faun. But all the excitement doesn’t end there. Soon enough Ella started to turn into a fat, pink, slimy eel. She stood up and steered at me. I could see her beady little eyes eyeing me up!! I could just tell that she was hungry and I was looking quite tasty. At this point I was sitting down but I wasn’t going to stay like this for very long! I grabbed my bag and ran for my life. I yelled and screamed until she gave up on me and dived back into the river, the one that she originally had been bitten by eels in. I kept walking slowly up the mountain. As I was walking I started to become bored. There wasn’t anything to do so I started to kick stones with my big hard hooves. I kicked big stones, little stones and middle sized stones just to keep myself entertained. I eventually got sick of doing this so I just started to yell helplessly. I could hear the echoes of my voice saying “help, help me”. It felt like I had said those words hundreds of times when I heard a reply. Well you see I was just calling “help, help me” when the reply came back “who’s there, where are you?” I replied “It’s me, Claudia”. Suddenly I saw Cecelia’s body pop around the corner. At first she was scared of the way I looked and started to run away but with much explaining she believed that it was indeed me. We sat down in a dry patch of dirt and started to tell each other how we got here and what had happened to us. Basically she said “I was in an under ground tunnel and it came to an end but three woven baskets were in front of me. So I lifted the lid of the middle one and then the others disappeared. “In the woven box was a necklace so I put it on” she said, “and then I got zapped right here”. “Wow! That’s weird, something similar happened to me”, I explained to Cecilia. “Where’s the necklace now?” She replied “right here”, and lifted it out from under her shirt from where it had remained around her neck. I rubbed my hoof on it. Something strange happened. I started to glow along with the necklace and then right before you know it I am me again – back in my body without hooves! But I wonder if I still have my powers I thought to myself. I pulled the woven box out of my bag and looked at it. I could see the two spiders Joelle and Emily weaving webs in a tunnel and Zac has turned into a possum boy. But I can also see a wolf that looks like Logan telling people to go the summit of the mountain. I put the box back into my bag. Cecilia asks me “what is that?” I tell her I found it on a rock. I can see everything that is happening on the mountain in it. I could see that a wolf that looks like Logan is telling people from our class to meet at the summit. I ask Cecilia if she wants to head up there. She replies “sure”. So we started to head up the mountain. I looked at Cecilia and said “I am quite surprised how well our food and water has lasted.” She replied “yeah it has but I’m starting to run low now”. I sighed. As I lifted my head and peered up the tall mountain, I could see the summit not far away. I also saw a large brown bird circling the tallest tree at the top of the mountain. I lifted my arm, pointing at the bird showing Cecelia. Cecelia looked but she was not very interested. All of a sudden with no warning, my arm caught the large bird’s attention. At full speed it swooped down the hill heading straight for me. I turned and ran but Cecelia didn’t follow – she was running the other way! I screamed at the top of my lungs. I turned my head not sure what I was going to see. The bird was right above me so I tried to duck (at this point anything to try to save myself was a good idea). But I was too late. The bird’s beak struck me in the side of the head and knocked me to the ground. There I lay injured on the hard, damp ground. I was bleeding from my temple. Everything was quiet. The only thing I could hear was my heart beat. It gradually got slower, and s l o w e r and s l o w e r until I couldn’t hear it any more............... Now I still remain on the mountain in spirit, haunting victims that may have had a similar experience to mine.