Ken Douglas - Gecko

However, after some time, Mahina was able to convince Ngaarara that she had accepted her fate and one day she told him that she wanted to take him home to meet her family. The Gecko Man agreed, because he had fallen in love with her and he wanted to make her happy.

So the very next day he took her back to her village. He remained at the outskirts, while Mahina went to her father’s house to make arrangements for the meeting and a feast to follow. After awhile she returned and told Ngaarara that he was to be received in her father’s house and that he would be accepted as a son. This made Ngaarara happy and he walked tall and proud when he entered the village, puffing up like a peacock when he was greeted by Mahina’s father and brothers.

“ Where are the women?” the Gecko Man asked.

“ They are doing what women do while we men eat and drink,” Mahina’s father said and he sent Mahina away.

Ngaarara was delighted. It was the best meal he’d ever had and for the first time in his life he felt like he belonged, like he had a family.

“ Now,” Mahina’s father said when the sun started to go down, “you wait here while we go and bring the women and a special surprise.”

“ Go, go.” Ngaarara was ecstatic, a special surprise for him. “Get it and hurry back and when you return, I’ll tell you my secret.”

But the surprise the men had for Ngaarara was not to be to his liking. Mahina’s father and brothers barred the door and piled firewood under the windows. Then they burned the Gecko Man alive, because everyone knows the only way to really kill a being like Ngaarara is to burn him until he’s nothing more than ash.

After the fire burned itself out, the villagers sang and danced throughout the night. Mahina was back and Ngaarara was dead.

“ That’s the traditional end of the story. Mahina returns to her village and everybody lives happily ever after, but there’s more,” Donna thought.

“ Ngaarara’s secret,” Jim thought.

“ Precisely,” Donna thought. “The Gecko Man’s secret.”

Mahina and all the villagers thought that her husband had the power to turn into a giant gecko whenever he wanted, like she’d thought he’d done in the smoke that day he’d come to take her away. But that afternoon, when she’d come to fetch him from the outskirts of the village, Ngaarara told his young wife his secret and it was this. The giant gecko and the man with the slitted eyes, were one and the same, but not the way she had thought. They were two parts, bound to each other, the same and different, never far apart.

Kill the man and the gecko finds a replacement by anointing another, whose mind is then taken over. Kill the gecko and the man finds a replacement by anointing a small green tree gecko which is transformed into a man-sized giant. This way the evil pairing goes on forever.

Unfortunately Mahina didn’t get a chance to tell her father this before they burned Ngaarara. He was not one, but two. They hadn’t killed him. They just made him angry. Very angry.

“ You see, Jim Monday, I know this to be true, because that young girl stolen by Ngaarara was my grandmother’s grandmother. This story has been handed down on the female side of my family for generations, because we know that someday he is going to come back and seek his revenge.”

“ And you think that thing that killed Roma is the Gecko Man coming after you?”

“ I do.”

“ Your mother told you that story to put you asleep?”

“ Among others.”

“ Was she trying to scare you to sleep?”

“ No, she was trying to make me aware,” Donna thought. “Now lay back and think about what I have told you.”

“ Excuse me sir.” He felt a squeeze on his shoulder and almost screamed.

“ You’ll have to raise your seat for the landing.” It was the stewardess with the freckles. “Did you enjoy the flight?”

“ You’re kidding. I’ve been on edge ever since we left L.A.”

“ I guess I was kidding. I did see that you were pretty anxious, but you made it.”

“ Yeah, I did.” He smiled. “The plane didn’t fall out of the sky, I didn’t flip out. All in all, I guess I’m pretty pleased with myself.” Then he asked, “What’s the local time?”

“ It’s 10:45.” She squeezed his shoulder again. “I hope you enjoy your stay in New Zealand.”

“ Me too.” He started to adjust his watch.

“ Oh, and it’s Wednesday. We lost a day when we crossed the date line.”

He thanked her and she continued down the aisle, checking seatbelts and seatbacks.

“ We lost a day,” he thought. “I hadn’t counted on that.”

“ And I don’t know anything about Whangarei. It seems so hopeless.”

“ I thought you were from there?”

“ No, I’m a city girl, from Auckland. Never been to the North Country, till this.”

“ Why did you go and what’s the last thing you remember?” He asked, trying to keep his mind off of the descending plane.

“ My older brother lives in Whangarei. He and his fiancee just moved up, and they were getting married. We came for the wedding. We arrived Tuesday night and we stayed at the Park Side Motel. I had my own room. I remember going to sleep. I don’t remember waking up.”

“ Your parents must be sick with worry.”

“ I know. I thought about asking you to call them, but that would only complicate things.”

“ It seems the logical place to start looking is the motel. It’s the only clue we have.”

“ You’ll find me. I just know it.”

“ First we have to get through customs,” he thought, and they both began to worry.

The plane bucked and he grabbed on to the armrests with white knuckles.

“ Just a little turbulence,” the stewardess said as she made her way back down the aisle, “nothing to worry about.” But Jim worried all the way to the ground. He was still worrying when he was in line at Immigration and Passport control.

“ I don’t look a bit like Eddie Lambert,” he thought.

“ It feels like your heart is going to beat right out of your chest. If you don’t calm down, you’re going to have a heart attack.”

He tried to control his breathing.

“ And stop sweating. It feels like I’ve just stepped out of the shower.”

“ Next,” a voice called.

Jim looked up. He was at the head of the line. The voice wanted him. He walked ahead, presented his passport. The man opened it, glanced at the photo, turned to a middle page, stamped and returned it.

“ Next,” he said again, through with Monday.

“ He barely looked at the picture,” Monday thought, as another control officer passed with a sniffer dog. The dog passed his nose over Jim’s carry-bag and kept going. “The dog even okayed me.”

“ Let’s go,” Donna thought.

Fifteen minutes later they were driving out of the airport in a red Toyota, rented with Eddie Lambert’s Visa Card. The eye patch was back in Jim’s pocket.

“ Get over!” The thought was a screech going through his brain. “You’re on the wrong side of the street.”

“ Forgot.” He jerked the car to the left side of the road.

It was two hours later and 2:00 in the afternoon when they stopped at a Mobil Station just outside Whangarei for directions to the Park Side Motel and petrol. Jim remembered the last Mobil Station he’d stopped at, just outside of another small town, and he thought of Glenna. He was glad she was going to be okay. Then he looked in the side mirror and watched as the attendant put petrol in the car. The last time a gas jockey put gas in his car in California was sometime back in 1975.

Five minutes later he shut off the engine, grabbed his bag, locked the car and entered the lobby of the Park Side Motel.