My awareness of the obscenities perpetrated deep in the jungle grew slowly. The drums were the first indication, for it occurred to me that, despite Clarissa’s suggestion, there were no predators on Koluwai big enough to harm a man. Then I started to notice that most of the islanders bore scars between the swirling patterns of their tattoos, and on many occasions I observed that some of the scars were very fresh. Next, I became conscious that—from an age any civilised person would consider still a part of childhood—the female Koluwaians were almost permanently pregnant, but while there were many, many children on the island, the population wasn’t expanding. In investigating this, I soon discovered that the town and all the villages were subject to mysterious disappearances. People simply vanished, and the islanders absolutely refused to talk about it, other than to acknowledge that it happened.
“Surely they don’t eat them all?” I said to Clarissa.
My companion, who was at that time preoccupied with fitting pews inside the church, replied distractedly, “When this place is finished and the natives can gather in it and listen to you, and when I begin to practise medicine, we’ll be better able to foster their trust. Perhaps then they’ll be more willing to explain the way of things in this part of the world.”
I looked around at the inside of the marvellous little church. “Assuming we can persuade them to come here at all.”
It wasn’t long before my suspicion that the islanders were engaging in blasphemous rites became inextricably bound to the phenomenal storms. These queer cloudless and rainless atmospheric disturbances crackled over the island with an almost clockwork regularity. Each night, when the first snap of electrical energy sounded, the men took up their spears and disappeared into the thick foliage—a fact that piqued my curiosity to such an extent that, one morning, I armed myself with my revolver, found the place where they’d pushed into the jungle, and followed their faint trail. It was a long and uncomfortable hike—the dawn’s dew quickly made my clothes sodden and thorns nicked at the skin of my hands and face—but I pushed on, determined to solve the mystery of their nightly excursions.
The path led to a small glade at the summit of a steep hill. It was crowded with white flowers whose cloying scent made the atmosphere so thick and sickly that my senses began to swim. I held my wet shirtsleeve over my nose and mouth, stepped forward, and noticed that something was lying in the middle of the space, its inky-blue form half-concealed by the blooms. Hesitantly, I approached it, an inexplicable chill crawling up my spine.
It was a corpse—eviscerated, beheaded, slashed, torn, and rendered impossible to identify. However, as I gazed at it, spellbound, one horrifying fact gradually overcame me. Though vaguely humanoid, the thing was neither man nor woman. It wasn’t any beast that I recognised. I didn’t know what manner of being it was.
Staggering back, I tripped over the dried husk of a severed limb and saw that there were many more of the dead things strewn around the clearing.
I shrieked, dropped my pistol, turned, and ran. By the time I reached the cabin, I’d half-convinced myself that the pungent aroma of the flowers had caused me to hallucinate.
I made no mention of my excursion to Clarissa. I feared she might already regard me as prone to mental instability.
Perhaps I was.
My nightmares grew worse.
By the middle of the year, the missionary station was completed. Even in a comfortable climate this would have been considered fast work, but under the burning Melanesian sun it was incredible, and I stood in awe of Clarissa’s practical skills, endurance, and knowledge.
“I shall send a man to deliver a message to all the villages,” I told her, “to inform them that we shall hold our first service this coming Sunday. Perhaps curiosity will drive a few to attend, but even if just one person comes, it will be a start.”
In the event, that’s exactly what I got—a congregation of one.
Iriputiz.
So I gave my first and only sermon on the island to its witch doctor, employing as much Koluwaian as I could muster but resorting frequently to German. I explained what the Bible is, and how, through its guidance, a man might live according to God’s will and thus gain eternal peace in the Kingdom of Heaven. I then asked Iriputiz to follow me in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
“And this will make your god come to us?” he asked.
“God is already present,” I answered.
“I do not see him.”
“He is in all that you see. He is in the air we breathe, the light that shines upon us, in the chirp of insects and the splash of the waves. God is everywhere and everything, for the world is His creation.”
“I do not believe you. Take me to this place you call Heaven. I want to see it.”
“The gates of Heaven open only to those who have professed faith in Our Lord, and in his son, Jesus Christ.”
Iriputiz gave a snort of disdain. “This is all a story,” he said, and stamped out of the church.
“I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” I confessed to Clarissa. “These people need something more tangible than words. It’ll take fire and brimstone before they believe.”
“Give it time, Aiden. I’ve noticed much disrepair in Kutumakau and the villages. I shall embark on a mission of restoration, and I have it in mind to create some sort of metal pylon at the top of the highest hill to draw the lightning away from the tree houses. Once these people gain material benefits from our presence, perhaps they’ll be more willing to listen.”
I nodded my approval but felt useless. It also occurred to me that, despite the frequency and ferocity of the electrical storms, Clarissa and I hadn’t once witnessed or heard of an actual lightning strike.
Moving into our new station appeared to cure me of my nocturnal terrors—I credited the light sea breeze I allowed to blow through my room for this—but on the night of the sermon, I suffered a bad dream of a different sort, one so vivid that it might have been real.
I’d retired at about eleven o’clock and, after an hour of restlessness, had fallen into a fitful and incomplete sleep—that state of suspension where one is aware that the body is slack and snores are being produced, but still feels rather too conscious for it to qualify as proper rest.
I was aware of the salt air whispering through my window. I was aware of the perpetual trilling of the frogs. I was aware that drums were rumbling in the jungled hills.
And I was aware that my bedchamber door slowly creaked open.
A cloud of steam billowed into the room, and with it Iriputiz, who appeared to be floating a few inches above the floor. He slid to my bedside and looked down at me.
“I will send you into the final storm, Reverend Fleischer, there to meet the god I serve—a
real
god! He has a task for you.”
He reached out and grasped my forearm, sinking his long pointed fingernails into my flesh.
With a cry of pain, I jerked awake, sat up, and swatted a large spider from my wrist. It had bitten me, leaving two little puncture marks. I jumped to the floor and chased the pest into a corner of the room where I flattened it with a slipper. I returned to my bed and lay down. I was trembling and a fiery sensation was creeping up my arm. Moments later, everything skewed sideways and I knew no more.
°
A monotonous chanting and distant rumble of thunder summoned me to consciousness. I was on my back, with the stars overhead, and I was moving. It took me a moment to realise that I was being borne along on a stretcher and there were islanders crowding to either side of it. Clarissa’s face hove into view and the light of burning brands reflected in her goggle lenses.
“Are you lucid, Aiden?”
“Of course. What’s happening?” My voice sounded dry and husky.
“Lie still. You’re seriously ill with fever.”
“But I was just sleeping.”
“No. You’ve been ranting and raving for more than a week.”
A week! I could barely credit this, for I had no sense that time had passed.
“Iriputiz says you’re suffering from something called
kichyomachyoma
—a sickness of the spirit. The islanders are immune to it but we aren’t. I’ve been through our entire pharmaceutical supplies trying to find something to treat it, but nothing has worked. The witch doctor assures me he can cure you with local herbs, so we’re taking you to the place in the hills where they grow. Apparently, they are only effective in the few minutes after they are picked.”
“No,” I croaked. “I’ll be all right. Don’t take me into the hills. There are—there are
things
there.”
“I’m scared you’re dying, Aiden. I don’t know what else to do. What things?”
“Things. They aren’t human. I saw one. The villagers had killed it. It was—it was a demon!” I struggled to sit up, caught a glimpse of a long procession trailing behind us, then fell back, utterly lacking in strength. The jungle canopy closed overhead as we pushed into the vegetation.
“You aren’t thinking straight,” Clarissa said. “Don’t worry—I’ll see that no harm comes to you. If we have to endure a heathen ritual in order to restore your health, then what’s the harm?”
My vision slipped in and out of focus. The stars, flickering through the branches, went from pinpricks to blurred lozenges and back again. The jungle’s shadows enveloped me and I tumbled into oblivion.
The next thing I knew, there was a loud crackle of lightning and I was looking up at Iriputiz.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
I wanted to ask what he was doing, but the moment I tried to speak, he forced something between my lips and pushed it to the back of my throat with his filthy thumb. I started to choke and felt a ferocious burning expand out from my gullet and into my skull. My heels, which, I dimly realised, were tightly tied together, drummed against the stone surface on which I lay. My wrists pulled at bindings. I bucked and writhed, unable to catch a breath. Then, just as I thought my heart might burst, the old man leaned forward and thumped my chest. I coughed vegetable matter into my mouth and spat it out.
As I sucked shudderingly at the humid air, my mind instantly cleared and I felt a fresh strength pouring into my limbs. I lifted my head and saw that I was stretched out on an altar in the centre of a clearing, around which a crowd of natives had gathered. Male and female, they were unashamedly naked, holding aloft burning brands, chanting their slow and repetitive dirge.
Clarissa was standing nearby. An engorged full moon hung overhead. The sky was cloudless but jagged lines of electrical energy were snapping back and forth across it.
“Get me out of here!” I pleaded hoarsely. “This is the Devil’s work!”
“Iriputiz is saving your life, Aiden!” Clarissa responded.
“Then why am I bound?”
The witch doctor interrupted. “The fever will return, Reverend Fleischer. These bonds are to keep you still while I do my work.”
I looked at my sexton and urged, “Please! Don’t let him touch me again.”
She hesitated and bit her lower lip irresolutely, then limped forward. An islander rushed up behind her and swung a knob-stick into the side of her head. Her goggles went spinning away as she flopped unconscious to the ground.
I groaned, fought, but failed to rise. Iriputiz came to my assistance. He put his arm under my shoulders and hoisted me into a sitting position.
“Your church,” he said, pointing to my left.
I looked and saw that a gap in the trees gave an unrestricted view down a long slope to where Kutumakau town slumped. I little beyond its shacks, the church that Clarissa had built stood whitely in the moonlight.
It burst into flames.
“Such a place does not belong here,” Iriputiz hissed. “
In the morning, its ashes will be thrown into the sea. Your imaginary god is not for us. Our gods are real, and it is time for you to serve one.”
He pushed me back down, drew a knife from his loincloth, and sliced at my clothes, tearing them from me. Then he applied the blade to my skin and began to cut me all over—small incisions, about an inch long and a quarter of an inch deep. He made hundreds of them, and into each he inserted a small seed that burned like acid. I screamed. I begged. I prayed for succour. It didn’t come.
Multiple bolts of lightning hissed and fizzled deafeningly overhead.
The islanders’ chanting changed its tone and tempo. It gained a menacing quality, and even through my terrible agony, I could feel an air of expectancy creeping over the jungle clearing.
A woman stepped forward and began a writhing, sensuous, then progressively frantic dance, keeping rhythm with the rolling intonation. At first shockingly unrestrained and animalistic, her movements became increasingly monstrous as her joints, with nasty groans and snaps, started to bend in unnatural directions. She scratched viciously at her own flesh, causing blood to stream over her glistening tattooed skin.
Iriputiz held out a bowl to her. From it, she plucked large thorns, which, one by one, she pushed into her legs, arms, torso, and face. Around each, the flesh swelled rapidly. I watched, horrified, as her skin stretched, split, and spurted blood. Finally, accompanied by an appalling scream, she practically flew apart, showering the gathering with gore.