The Delirium of Negation

by Victor Mahn

  Magnus found it amusing when Dennis started mouthing the Hail Mary prayers as he stood in front of the door, holding his revolver with his right hand and gripping his belt buckle with his left. As soon as the prayer was done, Dennis promptly gave a hard kick to the door with all his might, a couple of inches from the handle, and the door gave way rather easily with a loud crack. All that Rickety could see from behind Dennis was the darkness within the place. The place which we must now step into. The stench of manure was overpowering now.

  The first few seconds of observing a scene through vision-based perception could mean the difference between life and death, especially for combat personnel engaged in a battle. But the sense of sight, and the organs relating to such a sense, would need to be trained persistently and under varied conditions. In medical school, Rickety had been taught that human eyes would need just under an hour to be perceptive in the darkness, provided that the level of luminosity is not altered in that period.

  But here, now, data collection of the surroundings would need to be quick, and the decision-making process to be carried out as a group—as any one, or all, of them, could be affected unpropitiously by a lack of action. There is a nuance between thinking and acting, and during combat trainings, Rickety had been practising on making prompt decisions through several scenarios—for instance, whether to leave another in the battlefield who is under trauma and is likely to slow the unit down, or how much water from your canteen you need to consume if you are to make a crossing over a desert terrain on foot before collapsing due to heat exhaustion. Or when do you give up and succumb to a fate you know is shaped to end it all for you?

  Summoning all manner of mindful attention, they inspected every angle within the house. From the outset, it seemed that it was an empty hall, though it was spacious and there were outlines of picture frames on every wall that they could see. The flooring was of wooden panels tightly fitted so that the gaps between them were minimal.

  “What do you see, Dennis?” Rickety asked.

  Dennis looked at him out of the corner of his left eye, shook his head. “Same thing as you seein’.” He glanced up at the ceiling and the door which was now semi-detached from its hinges, then, “Don’t think anyone’s living here, Rick.”

  “Then how do you account for the reek of manure?” Rickety inquired, heightening his sense of caution.

  “Aye, lad. There’s someone here. I feel it, sure o’ it,” Magnus said.

  “Sshhh…” Annand-Sri hissed at them presently, commanding them to be still, though he did not turn to see them. Instead, he seemed to have his sight fixed on something. It was a matter of verity that amongst all of them here, Annand was the most nervous and he had been so all along, Rickety noted. But he continued his transfixed gaze, and as the others steadied themselves, Annand slowly lifted his arm, and pointed to a spot within. “There.”

  All of them studied the locus that Annand set out, but they couldn’t make out much. There seemed to be nothing of interest, except for the picture frames, and dust, and dried, crusty paint curling away from the wall. They remained silent, waited for Annand’s fretfulness to dissolve to its usual normalcy. But he did not seem to budge, as he again whispered to them, “There…”

  “Well, lad, we know that you found the Jap’s flag in the dark and all, your eyesight ain’t in doubt. But there ain’t nothin’—” Magnus stopped talking as he caught sight of what seemed to be a flapping wing. The wing was now out of sight, possibly folded onto the body of its owner. “Did you—”

  “Yes, Maggie, I saw it too.” Rickety acknowledged the baffling sight of a wing, black and ghastly as the depths of Hell itself. He nudged forward several inches toward Annand, then, “What do you make of it?”

  “Looks like a bird, sir. I see a crest too; seems to be a hornbill.” Annand became calmer.

  “You sure?” Dennis asked.

  “Yes. Seems to have a liking for a nest within the house, which provides it with the necessary shelter for its little flock. Yes, a hornbill. I see it clearer now.”

  Then the queerest thing happened: Magnus began to relax, his laborious breathing now fainter, his shoulders and arms dropped down. Several seconds later, he casually fell onto the ground. The wooden floor gave out a creak. What little edge they had in terms of concealment was now lost.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Limbuang had been sitting in silent contemplation since the departure of the Australian soldiers. He took in the view of the landscape, and that of Ambiau’s position, just several feet away, before shutting his eyes and stepping into a state of trance. And since Limbuang was a sinistral, he snapped his fingers of his left hand thrice, in the customary practice of invoking the spirits of the trees. They would assist in creating a quasi-illuminated picture of the jungle; of any movements that are beyond the capture of human awareness.

  However, there is a debt to be paid, if I were to do this. And I am prepared for it, anyhow.

  Limbuang let his inner-sight take charge now, let it flit in whichever direction that the spirits pointed to. The view was through the eyes of a proboscis monkey, which the locals call Orang Belanda, ‘the Dutchman’, as they believe that the Dutch resemble this creature, with their huge noses and large bellies. The spirits had decided to grant Limbuang this view, for this animal had been loitering about the high branches at this time and was the only one seemingly active. The proboscis, however, sees the world in black-and-white and upside-down. Thus, Limbuang had to compensate for the differences, making estimates to the front and angular distances.

  However, he could not command the animal—it would have been advantageous to have been able to direct it to a place and gradient of his choosing, but this was the limitation of the trance. Even this feat was beyond those of his contemporaries, and they would kill him without hesitation to learn this craft had they known that he was able to do it.

  In the glory days, just after the great civil war amongst the tribal units in Borneo, his name had been imputed to that of a legend, for his flair for divination and the curing of the sick had been distinguished. Limbuang, the Tiger-Head, they used to call him - the actual term, in the language of the Dayaks, was Limbuang Si-Haramaung.

  This reference to a tiger was a dual compliment, however. The tiger is a solitary animal and it protects its territory fiercely and without restraint. The other part comes from the canard of whether there are tigers in the island of Borneo. There are many in the neighbouring islands, however—such as Sumatra and Malaya. But very few have ever claimed to have seen one in Borneo, and the accounts that they do exist have become folklores in themselves, with the tigers coming and going either in the form of wisps of smoke, or as a woman in white linen floating about the woods.

  However, what made the mark on Limbuang being acclaimed as the most adroit of shamans was that of his brandishing a blade which he had crafted himself—a mandau, which is a traditional weapon used by the Dayak Ngaju people. Every tribal leader, at some point in his life, would have gone hunting for a prize. And whatever animal they encountered during the hunt – a wild boar, a crocodile, a python or a clouded leopard – would need to be killed, and a part of it would be used as an ornament on the mandau. This hunt was mostly carried out when the wife of the warrior was pregnant with their firstborn. Limbuang had decorated his blade with a couple of five-inch-long fangs of a tiger tied to the blade with rope.

  There were stirrings in front of him. He was aware that he was looking through the eyes of the proboscis, and that it had become conscious of a movement on the ground. Someone walking. Not in complete control of their movement, by the looks of it, for the person’s walk was wobbly and incoherent. A short pause, then darting forward several feet. Pause. Walk. The proboscis had its vision locked onto this peculiar character, knowing that it is safe up in the trees.

  By the looks of it, Limbuang perceived it to be another soldier—he could be seen to be in a khaki-type jacket and pants. The colourless view made it difficult to describe the feature
s of the person itself. Whether friend or foe, he could not be certain. He would need more information to arrive at that answer, and then decide what he would need to do about this.

  The view then changed to a position up in the trees, to a branch in the neighbouring tree. Limbuang cursed in his mind, as he had no control over where the animal chose to look. He would rather observe the soldier stumbling over the jungle floor. But then a counter-argument entered his thoughts: that animals, particularly those as instinctive as this proboscis, would be in constant detection of activities and of shifting around them, and would then allocate their senses to the danger that is most critical. In this case, the proboscis’s decision to cast its view onto the branches close by indicated that there was a more apparent peril there.

  Limbuang waited. For several seconds, the view was that of the leaves and seed-like pods. Nothing out of the ordinary. A whole minute passed. Sight was the only sense that he could latch on to. Perhaps there is a sound? Or maybe a puzzling smell that the ape had picked up?

  A shadow staggered out of the darkness just behind the first batch of leaves. How it had stayed hidden so perfectly right in front of him, though it was monochromic in aspect, he could not begin to determine. What was visible now was just the head and part of its neck, whatever the thing was. There seemed to be evidence of black, furry underbelly. Limbuang was shocked to grasp the fact that the being had about three-fourths of its body hidden behind the foliage. He was unsure of what it was, or how such a large being could have gathered itself way up in the tree undetected. The being looked right at the proboscis, then down at the clumsy soldier, eyeing him keenly. Limbuang noticed that it had wings like a bat, and the left arm was extended far outward at the length of the tree branch it was resting on.

  Limbuang felt the nexus between himself and the proboscis beginning to lose its momentum. He was experiencing bursts of the ocular sight through the proboscis and moments of darkness, which he attributed to his own sight through closed eyes. These fluctuations had never happened before, and he was unprepared for them. How do I overcome this? Beloved father! Help me! Fight this evil that is before me!

  The being seemed to have heard him, for it turned its head slowly toward the proboscis, to peer at it again. Limbuang saw that its eyes were aglow now. And it brought out its arm in a sudden motion toward its eye, rubbing it in the corners. The proboscis took the brunt of it and jumped off the branch; it seemed that it was hastily climbing upward along boughs and trunks and jumping through thickets. The view was jerky, and the paroxysm made Limbuang come out of his trance, and he found had been damped with sweat around his forehead and armpits.

  He got up to his feet, with Ambiau looking at him earnestly—he knew that Limbuang had seen something through his sight, and he wanted in on the knowledge. Limbuang sighed as he wiped the sweat off his forehead and eyebrows. He gripped his neck then, and began kneading it, recognising that his skin had turned wizened over the course of years under the sun. Ambiau said presently, “Apang, jampat. Sadingen amat.” Father, quickly now. It is very cold.

  Limbuang looked at him, and he felt his age amassing on his shoulders; he was too old for this sort of trial. “Tutu. Aku nak manahaseng. Aku jia… taluh papa himba.” True. I would need to breathe. I am not… this jungle is evil.

  “Why? What have you seen?”

  “I saw a figure, up in the trees. It was awaiting something to happen. Or for someone to come. I do not know. This is all new, there is no proper trail from one point to another. Everything seems to be happening at random. There is no flow, there seems to be no direction for us to go in. There is the limit of such vision. Even my sense of vaticination is under review now, Ambiau. I feel that I have fallen several rungs down the ladder now. I do not know what will happen. And I am afraid. I admit it, though, I am afraid.”

  “You speak the strangest things tonight. It is one thing to hear such incertitude from the fellow soldiers we’ve been accompanying. But to hear that from you… If you are to say that you are afraid, then shouldn’t the rest of us feel such fear as a hundred times that of yours? Learned Father, what are you saying? Is there darkness in the future?”

  “Darkness, and death. And not just one, but several. And not just for a few days, but I fear that it will span several long months. Even years. For as long as the war continues, this entity – the one that I briefly glimpsed – will survive. And it will hunt. Oh yes, it will feed! It has to feed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is a strong one, this malevolent being. She is corrupted to the core. Yes, it is a woman. Or rather, this entity was once a woman, and the essence of that gender-related energy has remained. For the most part, over the course of my being a shaman, I have experienced – and recorded several instances of this – that a woman carries some supplemental energy pattern that is different from that of a man. And I have found that it is due to her ability to be pregnant and give birth to a child. The physiological aspects of that has introduced several additional energy vibrations. And she has access to an extra dimension that men simply cannot enter. In fact, men do not even know that there is an additional realm.”

  “All right… but what does it mean? Why are you telling me this?”

  Limbuang sighed again, rubbed his upper lip with his thumb. Then, “Because… this dimension is a reservoir of pure energy. Nothing else is available in it but energy. That is what is channelled to a womb carrying a child—it is necessary to stream it to a newly-created body carrying a life. It is an energy of purity, without pollution of any human desires.”

  “I see. All right—”

  “So, a woman has access to such a pool of energy. And that energy is good; it is maternal and pure. But imagine, if one could turn it another way. If a woman is nothing but evil within, how would such energy take shape? And another point you would have to note here, Ambiau, is that the woman would need to be pregnant to have access to that reservoir. A spark of another life within a body is what triggers the door to that reservoir to be swung open. So, do you see?”

  Ambiau had a look of distress as he took in the words. A pregnant woman, the child’s presence in her creating a doorway for her to access some special energy, and a malicious being will harness that energy for evil use…

  “Okay. I understand that. Is that what you saw? A woman? Where was she?”

  Limbuang hesitated briefly. Better to tell him the estimation of the distance than the glaring fact of how much it is bothering me. “I believe that the being was about a mile from where we are now. But it seems to be at the other end of the village you were at. There was something about her that felt oddly familiar, though…”

  He tried to recall the sight through the proboscis’s eyes, the inverted and monochromic image. He found it utterly taxing to make sense of such an image, to disregard irrelevant data, and zoom in on the pertinent. The apposite observations would be required to make a sound judgement about what he saw. Or what he thought he saw.

  “I saw… I am not certain, though. It was all blurry and it happened quickly. The ape ran off when it got startled, so I am not sure.”

  “Yes, but, what did you see?”

  Limbuang exhaled noisily, and he knew that what he was about to utter had some truth to it. In fact, he was not willing to accept it just yet. But he said it anyway.

  “I think it was my mother. I saw her ring on her finger when she stuck her hand out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Come on, man! It takes about eleven pounds of pressure to collapse a grown man’s windpipe! Three times that if you wanted to crush it completely! There is no way in hell that Maggie’s windpipe collapsed on its own. No way!” Rickety was fuming at Annand’s notion that Magnus might have had a condition of soft tissues in his throat and trachea, which was what that had caused his breathing channels to have collapsed inward. Though Rickety was also sure that Magnus collapsed due to breathing complications, he could not tell for certain the cause of it.

  A quick
physical assessment showed a most remarkable thing: there was evidence of Magnus being choked, almost like a forceful strangulation, with the symptomatic bruising around the neck. Though there was not much light, Rickety could also make out signs of petechiae, corresponding to physical trauma on the external tissues. He was, however, appalled at the speed with which that symptom had presented itself. This was another unknown that he was not prepared for, and it had changed the situation considerably. I am glad that he is alive, though…

  “Look, I admit that this is a fool’s errand; we all made a mistake coming here without announcing to the CO. I take full responsibility for it, though Maggie knew of the risks out here in the jungle.” Rickety felt exhaustion in his chest and knees. “We need to get back to base; we’ll hoist him onto our shoulders. He is still breathing, though barely.”

  Annand and Dennis were stretched on the ground beside Magnus, both fatigued by the heaving of him for the distance between the point of collapse to the start of the trees where they had settled. Annand was gently pressing the incomplete limb on his left, around the stub. He said softly, “Sir, we need to rest here for now. We need sunlight to navigate back to camp. Our lanterns are shot dead too; we have no light for use now. We rest?”

  “What of Limbuang and Ambiau? We need to get to them. They must be at the other side of this place, right? Not too far off,” Dennis said, as he raised himself halfway up. “We did not give them a lantern, did we?”

  “No. No, we didn’t. Nor would they have taken it, Dennis. These tribal folk, they prefer the use of their instincts and senses than the use of aid of any kind… Maybe that contributes to their mythical stories and folklore—they end up seeing and hearing things that are not there,” Rickety said. He sat down, stretched his legs outward and held his kneecaps. “Yes, we ought to get to them. I will go out to them; you two must stay here with Maggie. I will bring them here, and they can also help lift him back to our camp. We should move now, not around dawn. The timing’s off, guys.”