Echoes of Darkness

by SIMS, MAYNARD

  The others didn’t react to his shouts at first, though predictably it was Vicky Towers who ran while the others walked.

  “What is it?” she asked as she reached him.

  Jack waited until the three men had caught up with them before he brushed a piece of broken fern aside with his sandal. On the grass, amidst a smear of glistening wet blood, was part of a human foot, clearly torn raggedly from the rest of the body.

  Sybella was so still that at first Grace thought she might be asleep.

  Grace had woken early, then lain in bed breathing deeply and silently so Stephen would not wake. They had made love the night before, but it had not been any kind of love that Grace recognised. There was a carnality about it, from both sides, that contained echoes of caves, of passion beneath Neanderthal skies, of beasts that roar in a black night. They had not uttered a single word to each throughout the whole duration, as if speech had not been invented, or words would prove a barrier to what they both wanted from the act. What Grace wanted was some kind of revenge for the scare Stephen had given her. How she could achieve this by making him pound and rock with a frenzied power she couldn’t explain to herself, and as they fell asleep she guessed neither was satisfied with the outcome.

  Now she had risen and felt happy that he still snored in the marital bed while she explored the complex without him. After an hour or so she wanted a drink, and she made her way to the bar for a glass of orange.

  Sybella was dressed in a cream coloured robe that may have covered a swimming costume. As Grace got nearer to her she saw that the woman was in fact reading a paperback book that she rested on the bar counter. So absorbed was she that her whole body was still, calm to the point of coma it seemed. Then she moved slightly, the robe parting a little on the leg, showing the light brown skin of upper thigh. Grace looked away as though caught in the act of voyeurism.

  “A welcome distraction,” Sybella said softly as Grace reached her, though Sybella made no movement away from the book. The robe opened a tantalising fraction more. Grace was suddenly aware she had not had a drink yet that morning.

  “Is there anyone serving?” she asked casually.

  At last Sybella tore her attention away from the book and looked directly at Grace, who smiled uncertainly, feeling like an errant child before a stern parent.

  “That’s the strange thing. Well, more odd than strange to be precise.”

  Grace laughed nervously, but couldn’t think how to reply.

  When it seemed as if she was about to lose interest and return to the pages of the paperback, Sybella swept her arm to encompass figuratively the entire dining and bar areas. “No-one around. Not a waiter, though I know it is still quite early. Not a dainty waitress. No Redmond, no Towers woman. Not a soul until you came in. Good morning by the way.”

  Grace murmured a polite response but she was noticing that the dinner debris from the night before was still strewn over the table. The bar too was hardly clean and ready for a new day. It was littered with empty and half-empty glasses, clearly still resting from the previous evening. It was not the smart and professional appearance of which the brochures boasted.

  “I noticed that as well,” Sybella confirmed, as if Grace’s thoughts had been spoken.

  “It doesn’t look as if any of the staff stayed behind to clear up last night.”

  “Or have come in to do it this morning.”

  For the first time the two women looked into each other’s eyes, and the questions that lingered behind both were unspoken.

  “I’ve been here longer than you have,” Sybella said. “And I’m not shy. I had a peek into the kitchen. Chaos from the work surfaces to the ovens, and the sinks are overflowing with dirty dishes. They all seem to have left in rather a hurry.”

  “Surely they wouldn’t have just clocked off without tidying up.” She knew it sounded feeble but she couldn’t envisage what could have made the entire staff vanish in such Marie Celeste fashion. Then she had a vision of Stephen’s face in the swimming pool, urging her to get out quickly. Her annoyance with him seemed less valid somehow.

  “The back door to the kitchen is open. It leads out into the trees. I think they all dashed off and left us to it.”

  Though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all himself, Stephen Toomey was nervous finding himself alone in the bungalow when he awoke.

  Dressing hurriedly he was hit by a wave of heat when he stepped out into the glare of the sun. Despite the brightness of the morning he was still troubled by what he had seen, thought he had seen, in the swimming pool. Neither he nor Grace had seen anyone on their way back to the bungalow in the night, so they hadn’t mentioned it to a soul. Not that they would have known what to say, it all seemed so amorphous, so ethereal.

  That was partly what was disturbing him. He had been brought up to appreciate facts and figures, balance sheets and analysis. The mystical was something he heard about at school and which some of his less privileged friends talked about. He was of the practical, the here and now, the real and the rational. He was feeling uneasy.

  “You’ve been abandoned as well?”

  Stephen heard the voice but couldn’t see who the woman was as the sun was refracting through the branches of flickering green and blinding him.

  “I’m over here on my veranda. You can’t see me can you?”

  Shielding his eyes as best he could he made his way down the fancy brick path to the wooden decked veranda. Emma Grant was sitting on one of the wicker chairs, a jug of orange juice and some biscuits on the marble table by her side. She was dressed in white shorts, and pale blue shirt. Stephen found himself inappropriately interested.

  Emma poured him some orange and they both leaned back in companionable silence.

  Around them the jungle breathed with indiscernible life. Sounds came, noises went, but none could quite be identified. No birds were seen, but there were plenty to be heard, their song often strident, like an animal in pain.

  Neither of them knew that the pilot was missing, and believed dead. They didn’t know that the four local girls and two local men seemed to have disappeared. Nor that pale yellow eyes were watching them intently from the shelter of the trees.

  The chef had been born into a humble East End of London family, spending his childhood in a cramped terraced house in Chadwell Heath. Christened Mark he had been lonely and unhappy as a boy, teased for his quietness and shy ways. He was happiest when playing at home with his mother, who had three older children to look after, as well as a husband who worked long hours in the local Dominion Works.

  Mark had taken little interest in football, which was the passion of his father and his elder brothers. Dragged along to see West Ham he hated the noise and jostle of the crowd, the language they employed even in front of the children.

  “That boy will come to no good,” His father would declare as he hung up his hat and scarf in the hall after the match.

  Shunned by father and brothers, Mark retreated into a world that revolved around his mother and his imagination. Long hours were spent in make believe, creating scenes and imaginary playmates.

  Somewhere in the solitary play grew a love of making things. This developed into an interest in food, and helping his mother with the cooking. Much to his father’s disgust he became the main cook in the house as his mother gradually fell under the onslaught of depression and exhaustion. By the time he was old enough to leave school and go onto college he knew he wanted to be a chef. As a complete break from his past he ditched the name Mark and became Aiden. He did his apprenticeship in hotels and restaurants as varied as the food and the people who came to eat it.

  Before he was thirty he was head chef in a top London hotel, and by his mid-thirties he was headhunted to France. From there he was almost relieved when Vicky Towers made her approach and asked him to head up the cuisine in the new complex. Life in Paris had become complicated for a variety of reasons and a twelve-month contract on a tropical island sounded like his idea of paradise.
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  The night had been a warm one, when even the frantic stirrings of the ceiling fan, beating like the frenzied wings of a bird, had failed to dissipate the heat. The inaugural meal had been a success, and he didn’t feel the least bit guilty when he left the staff to clear up and retired to his bungalow, tired but elated.

  Now he was not so sure it had been a good idea to leave them to it. The kitchen was in chaos. Food not cleared away, dirty crockery still piled in the sink, spillage’s not wiped. Not a soul to be found.

  It took about ten minutes of generally tidying up, cursing and threatening all kinds of physical violence to the lazy…before he saw it. Unnoticed at first, just another flaw in the pristine order he demanded in his environment. Probably he had seen it straight away but imagined it must be spilled sauce, some strawberry coulis perhaps. It was blood.

  There wasn’t a great deal. Very much reduced portions rather than a plate piled high in the manner his father would have approved. A cut finger? No, more than that he thought. In fact it was a trail like a wet eel through sand. Not a spot, not a pool, but a trail, laid out as if to follow.

  It led to the walk-in larder. Sometimes the blood was thick, sometimes it was smeared thinly as if a brush had been used by an inexpert painter. The larder door was slightly open, another irritation in this heat, who knew what food had been ruined?

  As he was almost at the door he was sure it moved. Just a fraction of a movement, finished before it registered it seemed. An imaginary blink of the eye type of movement.

  He pulled open the door and a long thin arm from within reached out and grasped his neck. Taken by surprise and considerable force, Aiden reverted to his youth and Mark called unashamedly for his mother. The other grey arm wrapped itself around his body and the red misshapen mouth opened in base pleasure. The yellow eyes burned with weary conflict, blankly denying any clemency.

  Mark was aware of the stench of rotting flesh, of dried blood and the smell of damp earth after the rain. Pencil sharp claws raked his chest in casual play, ripping through clothing and skin with equal ease. As the blood flowed Mark was relaxed into trauma, the cloak of fear sending waves of numbness through his body.

  Other long shapes came in through the open back doors, feet scraping on the tiles. Preparation was not as Mark would have supervised, but the meal was enjoyed.

  “Always, it seems to me, I have felt apart, not accepted. Around me are the parties, the conversations, the smiles and the secrets. And I stand alone, just on the point of full participation. I’ve always envied other people their carefree acceptance of life and its joys. I can usually adopt a cynical defence, which allows me to join in, but without ever feeling the spirit of what the others feel. Surrounded by hundreds, thousands, of smiling people, who know each other, who talk casually to one another, I am on the edge of the group, in it but never part of it. Life is there for everyone to see but everyone else embraces it, while I am still not sure if I should, if I trust it. I’m always just on the verge of saying what has not been said, of touching what has not been touched, of explaining what has never been explained. But I’m apart, alone, so who will listen to me? When I am in the middle of a happy throng of friends, when all is light and spontaneous, I am separate, looking at myself from afar and I’m thinking and I’m away from them. I’m wondering why they can’t see that I’m not like them, that I am different. I’m dreading the time when they find me out for not being like them, for not being able to wholly let go, for always holding a little something of myself back in case I’m laughed at, or in case this is only a rehearsal for the real thing. I remember the time I shared this with Jack, thinking he would laugh. Thinking he might let everyone else know my fears. Hoping he could explain it all to me. Instead he looked sad. ‘Don't you realise,’ he said. ‘It's like that for all of us. That's what the world is. Didn't you know?’ I only partly believed him, because when you’re on the outside it’s hard to hear what the ones close to the source are saying. Hard to believe what they tell you.”

  Emma let her voice trail away into the void, surprised she had spoken so freely to this man, whom she hardly knew.

  Stephen was uncomfortable at first, hearing these intimate secrets. Hearing thoughts he would find difficult to reveal to himself, would never be able to articulate to anyone else. Then his basic decency took over and he fumbled for words that would fit the occasion, that would let this woman know she wasn’t alone with her fears.

  “It’s okay,” Emma said quietly. “I’m sorry to embarrass you.”

  Stephen had the courage not to pretend otherwise. “I didn’t expect…”

  Emma poured some more juice. “Are you and Grace going to have children?”

  Stephen shrugged, a man’s response to a female question. “We haven’t really talked about it. I expect so.”

  “You should. Jack and I should.”

  The sounds of the jungle were becoming muted and both Stephen and Emma were becoming aware of it. They listened just a little too intently. They smiled at each other just that bit too quickly.

  “Do you think it’s getting quieter?” Emma eventually asked.

  Stephen stood and walked to the edge of the veranda. “I can’t see anything. But, yes, it is almost, well, eerie.”

  Emma laughed but not convincingly. The trees were almost silent now, as though waiting.

  Suddenly a huge roar rent the air like a lion and an elephant crossed with a jet engine. Undergrowth was trampled by seemingly dozens of feet as huge shapes rushed through the jungle. Birds screeched into the air in fright and anticipation. Shrieks and cries expanded across the foliage as though thousands of life’s ghosts were raised in celebration.

  Emma instinctively grabbed hold of Stephen’s arm and he flung his arm around her shoulders.

  “Come on.” He took Emma’s elbow and steered her back into the bungalow.

  “What is it?”

  “Whatever it is I don’t think I read about it in Redmond’s brochure.”

  Redmond began to deny the truth of what he was looking at, but none of the others were prepared to allow any kind of cover-up.

  “It… it’s Chris isn’t it?” Vicky stammered.

  “What’s left of him.” Smith said, with no trace of humour, intended or otherwise.

  “That explains why the helicopter hasn’t taken off,” Adam said.

  Redmond rounded on him, grateful for the opportunity to denounce reality with some anger. “It doesn’t explain anything. Where is he? What happened to him? Do they sound like explanations?”

  Jack looked into the jungle. “We’ll have to search for him.”

  Vicky stood next to him. “We aren’t equipped for a jungle search. All we have is what you see.”

  “The jungle didn’t seem that dense to me when we flew over. Surely we can be at the beach in ten minutes.”

  Smith considered the decision and then said, “We should stick together. Whatever it was that killed Chris is clearly dangerous. We stand a better chance as a group.”

  “I didn’t think there were any wild animals on the island,” Jack said.

  “There aren’t supposed to be.”

  Redmond knew one thing even if he didn’t know what was happening. He knew he didn’t want to search the jungle with the threat of some wild beast hiding behind every tree. “Someone ought to warn the other guests.”

  Vicky looked at him and not for the first time wondered why she had ever allowed herself to become involved with such a cowardly man.

  The three men realised what Redmond was saying and though their own fear was strong they had to admit they agreed with Redmond’s idea.

  “Vicky can go back to the complex and warn the others,” Jack said, glancing at the woman for approval. She wanted to go with the men but knew it was either her or Redmond who would miss out on the search. She had no wish to deny him that pleasure.

  Redmond opened his mouth to protest but lacked the conviction to make even a stab at a plausible argument. He wanted to ask Vicky
to be careful but resentment prevented him. He watched as she walked, a little too quickly, back to the main complex.

  “Right,” Adam said. “We should agree to keep together.”

  The jungle welcomed them like a doorman at a seedy club, all winks and innuendoes. Leaves trickled against their faces. Branches swung back against their arms. Foliage resisted the motion of their legs. Heat dripped from the waxy trunks and limp creeping vines, pasting the clothing to their bodies.

  Adam led the way, Jack and Redmond in between, with John bringing up the rear. Each of them was alert to the slightest sound, the merest of movements. A twig cracked and Redmond fell to the ground in a crouch, raising himself with feigned dignity when he realised he was safe. It was oddly quiet in the deepest part of the jungle. A bird screeched out from behind a bush, wings flapping like a demon, its cry beseeching in its shrill intensity. The echoes reverberated long after it had disappeared from sight.

  Sunlight struggled to gain a foothold through the canopy of branches, and there were areas where darkness reigned. These seemed to increase in number and blackness the further they went. Shadows seemed to follow them as they pushed their way through. Wary of the dark patches beneath the trees they tried avoiding them as much as possible only to begin to think the pools of black were tracking them.

  Rustling movements behind the drapes of the leaves. Shifting patterns of the black shadows. The laboured breathing of the men. Almost complete silence where there should have been life. The occasional frightened bird, soaring into the sky, racking out a warning. Incessant heat pounding at their heads, causing perspiration to soak their bodies. Bodies already torn and cut by the claw like tips of the leaves, and the thorn sharp plants underfoot, and the resistant branches arguing at each step about being pushed back to allow access.

  Eventually they reached the edge of the jungle. With great relief they stepped onto the white sand beach, the brilliant blue of the sea more like restless dreams than ever.