by Clive Barker
The flight was noisy, cramped and tedious; the two men exchanged no words for its full duration. Stumpf just kept his eyes on the tracts of unfelled wilderness they passed over, though from one hour to the next the scene scarcely changed. A panorama of sable green, broken on occasion by a glint of water; perhaps a column of blue smoke rising here and there, where land was being cleared; little else.
At Santarem they parted with a single handshake which left every nerve in Stumpf s hand scourged, and an open cut in the tender flesh between index finger and thumb. Santarem wasn't Rio, Locke mused as he made his way down to a bar at the south end of the town, run by a veteran of Vietnam who had a taste for ad hoc animal shows. It was one of Locke's few certain pleasures, and one he never tired of, to watch a local woman, face dead as a cold manioc cake, submit to a dog or a donkey fora few grubby dollar bills. The women of Santarem were, on the whole, as unpalatable as the beer, but Locke had no eye for beauty in the opposite sex: it mattered only that their bodies be in reasonable working order, and not diseased. He found the bar, and settled down for an evening exchanging dirt with the American. When he tired of that - some time after midnight - he bought a bottle of whisky and went out looking for a face to press his heat upon.
The woman with the squint was about to accede to a particular peccadillo of Locke's - one which she had resolutely refused until drunkenness persuaded ner to abandon what little hope of dignity she had - when there came a rap on the door.
'Fuck,' said Locke.
'Si,' said the woman. 'Fook. Fook.' It seemed to be the only word she knew in anything resembling English. Locke ignored her and crawled drunkenly to the edge of the stained mattress. Again, the rap on the door.
'Who is it?' he said.
'Senhor Locke?' The voice from the hallway was that of a young boy.
'Yes?' said Locke. His trousers had become lost in the tangle of sheets. 'Yes? What do you want?'
'Mensagem,' the boy said. 'Urgente. Urgente.'
'For me?' He had found his trousers, and was pulling them on. The woman, not at all disgruntled by this desertion, watched him from the head of the bed, toying with an empty bottle. Buttoning up, Locke crossed from bed to door, a matter of three steps. He unlocked it. The boy in the darkened hallway was of Indian extraction to judge by the blackness of his eyes, and that peculiar lustre his skin owned. He was dressed in a T-shirt bearing the Coca-Cola motif.
'Mensagem, Senhor Locke,' he said again, '... do hospital.'
The boy was staring past Locke at the woman on the bed. He grinned from ear to ear at her cavortings.
'Hospital?' said Locke.
''Sim. Hospital "Sacrado Coraqa de Maria".'
It could only be Stumpf, Locke thought. Who else did he know in this corner of Hell who'd call upon him? Nobody. He looked down at the leering child.
'Vem comigo,' the boy said, 'vem comigo. Urgente.'
'No,' said Locke. 'I'm not coming. Not now. You understand? Later. Later.'
The boy shrugged. '... Ta morrendo,' he said.
'Dying?' said Locke.
'Sim. Ta morrendo.'
'Well, let him. Understand me? You go back, and tell him, I won't come until I'm ready.'
Again, the boy shrugged. 'E meu dinheiro? he said, as Locke went to close the door.
'You go to Hell,' Locke replied, and slammed it in the child's face.
When, two hours and one ungainly act of passionless sex later, Locke unlocked the door, he discovered that the child, by way of revenge, had defecated on the threshold.
The hospital 'Sacrado Coraqa de Maria' was no place to fall ill; better, thought Locke, as he made his way down the dingy corridors, to die in your own bed with your own sweat for company than come here. The stench of disinfectant could not entirely mask the odour of human pain. The walls were ingrained with it; it formed a grease on the lamps, it slickened the unwashed floors. What had happened to Stumpf to bring him here? a bar-room brawl, an argument with a pimp about the price of a woman? The German was just damn fool enough to get himself stuck in the gut over something so petty. 'Senhor Stumpf?' he asked of a woman in white he accosted in the corridor. 'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf.'
The woman shook her head, and pointed towards a harried-looking man further down the corridor, who was taking a moment to light a small cigar. He let go the nurse's arm and approached the fellow. He was enveloped in a stinking cloud of smoke.
'I'm looking for Senhor Stumpf,' he said.
The man peered at him quizzically.
'You are Locke?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Ah.' He drew on the cigar. The pungency of the expelled smoke would surely have brought on a relapse in the hardiest patient. Tm Doctor Edson Costa,' the man said, offering his clammy hand to Locke. 'Your friend has been waiting for you to come all night.'
'What's wrong with him?'
'He's hurt his eye,' Edson Costa replied, clearly indifferent to Stumpf s condition. 'And he has some minor abrasions on his hands and face. But he won't have anyone go near him. He doctored himself.'
'Why?' Locke asked.
The doctor looked flummoxed. 'He pays to go in a clean room. Pays plenty. So I put him in. You want to see him? Maybe take him away?'
'Maybe,' said Locke, unenthusiastically.
'His head ...' said the doctor. 'He has delusions.'
Without offering further explanation, the man led off at a considerable rate, trailing tobacco-smoke as he went. The route, that wound out of the main building and across a small internal courtyard, ended at a room with a glass partition in the door.
'Here,' said the doctor. 'Your friend. You tell him,' he said as a parting snipe, 'he pay more, or tomorrow he leaves.'
Locke peered through the glass partition. The grubby-white room was empty, but for a bed and a small table, lit by the same dingy light that cursed every wretched inch of this establishment. Stumpf was not on the bed, but squatting on the floor in the corner of the room. His left eye was covered with a bulbous padding, held in place by a bandage ineptly wrapped around his head.
Locke was looking at the man for a good time before Stumpf sensed that he was watched. He looked up slowly. His good eye, as if in compensation for the loss of its companion, seemed to have swelled to twice its natural size. It held enough fear for both it and its twin; indeed enough for a dozen eyes.
Cautiously, like a man whose bones are so brittle he fears an injudicious breath will shatter them, Stumpf edged up the wall, and crossed to the door. He did not open it, but addressed Locke through the glass.
'Why didn't you come?' he said.
Tm here.'
'But sooner,' said Stumpf. His face was raw, as if he'd been beaten. 'Sooner.'
'I had business,' Locke returned. 'What happened to you?'
'It's true, Locke,' the German said, 'everything is true.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Tetelman told me. Cherrick's babblings. About being exiles. It's true. They mean to drive us out.'
'We're not in the jungle now,' Locke said. 'You've got nothing to be afraid of here.'
'Oh yes,' said Stumpf, that wide eye wider than ever. 'Oh yes! I saw him -'
'Who?'
'The elder. From the village. He was here.'
'Ridiculous.'
'He was here, damn you,' Stumpf replied. 'He was standing where you're standing. Looking at me through the glass.'
'You've been drinking too much.'
'It happened to Cherrick, and now it's happening to me. They're making it impossible to live -'
Locke snorted. Tm not having any problem,' he said.
'They won't let you escape,' Stumpf said. 'None of us'll escape. Not unless we make amends.'
'You've got to vacate the room,' Locke said, unwilling to countenance any more of this drivel. 'I've been told you've got to get out by morning.'
'No,' said Stumpf. 'I can't leave. I can't leave.'
'There's nothing to fear.'
'The dust,' said the G
erman. The dust in the air. It'll cut me up. I got a speck in my eye - just a speck - and the next thing my eye's bleeding as though it'll never stop. I can't hardly lie down, the sheet's like a bed of nails. The soles of my feet feel as if they're going to split. You've got to help me.'
'How?' said Locke.
'Pay them for the room. Pay them so I can stay 'til you can get a specialist from Sao Luis. Then go back to the village, Locke. Go back and tell them. I don't want the land. Tell them I don't own it any longer.'
Til go back,' said Locke, 'but in my good time.'
'You must go quickly,' said Stumpf. 'Tell them to let me be.'
Suddenly, the expression on the partially-masked face changed, and Stumpf looked past Locke at some spectacle down the corridor. From his mouth, slack with fear, came the small word, 'Please.'
Locke, mystified by the man's expression, turned. The corridor was empty, except for the fat moths that were besetting the bulb. 'There's nothing there -' he said, turning back to the door of Stumpf s room. The wire-mesh glass of the window bore the distinct imprint of two bloody palms.
'He's here,' the German was saying, staring fixedly at the miracle of the bleeding glass. Locke didn't need to ask who. He raised his hand to touch the marks. The handprints, still wet, were on his side of the glass, not on Stumpf s.
'My God,' he breathed. How could anyone have slipped between him and the door and laid the prints there, sliding away again in the brief moment it had taken him to glance behind him? It defied reason. Again he looked back down the corridor. It was still bereft of visitors. Just the bulb - swinging slightly, as if a breeze of passage had caught it - and the moth's wings, whispering. 'What's happening?' Locke breathed.
Stumpf, entranced by the handprints, touched his fingertips lightly to the glass. On contact, his fingers blossomed blood, trails of which idled down the glass. He didn't remove his fingers, but stared through at Locke with despair in his eye.
'See?' he said, very quietly.
'What are you playing at?' Locke said, his voice similarly hushed. This is some kind of trick.'
'No.'
'You haven't got Cherrick's disease. You can't have. You didn't touch them. We agreed, damn you,' he said, more heatedly. 'Cherrick touched them, we didn't.'
Stumpf looked back at Locke with something close to pity on his face.
'We were wrong,' he said gently. His fingers, which he had now removed from the glass, continued to bleed, dribbling across the backs of his hands and down his arms. 'This isn't something you can beat into submission, Locke. It's out of our hands.' He raised his bloody fingers, smiling at his own word-play: 'See?' he said.
The German's sudden, fatalistic calm frightened Locke. He reached for the handle of the door, and jiggled it. The room was locked. The key was on the inside, where Stumpf had paid for it to be.
'Keep out,' Stumpf said. 'Keep away from me.'
His smile had vanished. Locke put his shoulder to the door.
'Keep out, I said,' Stumpf shouted, his voice shrill. He backed away from the door as Locke took another lunge at it. Then, seeing that the lock must soon give, he raised a cry of alarm. Locke took no notice, but continued to throw himself at the door. There came the sound of wood beginning to splinter.
Somewhere nearby Locke heard a woman's voice, raised in response to Stumpf s calls. No matter; he'd have his hands on the German before help could come, and then, by Christ, he'd wipe every last vestige of a smile from the bastard's lips. He threw himself against the door with increased fervour; again, and again. The door gave.
In the antiseptic cocoon of his room Stumpf felt the first blast of unclean air from the outside world. It was no more than a light breeze that invaded his makeshift sanctuary, but it bore upon its back the debris of the world. Soot and seeds, flakes of skin itched off a thousand scalps, fluff and sand and twists of hair; the bright dust from a moth's wing. Motes so small the human eye only glimpsed them in a shaft of white sunlight; each a tiny, whirling speck quite harmless to most living organisms. But this cloud was lethal to Stumpf; in seconds his body became a field of tiny, seeping wounds.
He screeched, and ran towards the door to slam it closed again, flinging himself into a hail of minute razors, each lacerating him. Pressing against the door to prevent Locke from entering, his wounded hands erupted. He was too late to keep Locke out anyhow. The man had pushed the door wide, and was now stepping through, his every movement setting up further currents of air to cut Stumpf down. He snatched hold of the German's wrist. At his grip the skin opened as if beneath a knife.
Behind him, a woman loosed a cry of horror. Locke, realizing that Stumpf was past recanting his laughter, let the man go. Adorned with cuts on every exposed part of his body, and gaining more by the moment, Stumpf stumbled back, blind, and fell beside the bed. The killing air still sliced him as he sank down; with each agonised shudder he woke new eddies and whirlpools to open him up.
Ashen, Locke retreated from where the body lay, and staggered out into the corridor. A gaggle of onlookers blocked it; they parted, however, at his approach, too intimidated by his bulk and by the wild look on his face to challenge him. He retraced his steps through the sickness-perfumed maze, crossing the small courtyard and returning into the main building. He briefly caught sight of Edson Costa hurrying in pursuit, but did not linger for explanations.
In the vestibule, which, despite the late hour was busy with victims of one kind or another, his harried gaze alighted on a small boy, perched on his mother's lap. He had injured his belly apparently. His shirt, which was too large for him, was stained with blood; his face with tears. The mother did not look up as Locke moved through the throng. The child did however. He raised his head as if knowing that Locke was about to pass by, and smiled radiantly.
There was nobody Locke knew at Tetelman's store; and all the information he could bully from the hired hands, most of whom were drunk to the point of being unable to stand, was that their masters had gone off into the jungle the previous day. Locke chased the most sober of them and persuaded him with threats to accompany him back to the village as translator. He had no real idea of how he would make his peace with the tribe. He was only certain that he had to argue his innocence. After all, he would plead, it hadn't been he who had fired the killing shot. There had been misunderstandings, to be certain, but he had not harmed the people in any way. How could they, in all conscience, conspire to hurt him? If they should require some penance of him he was not above acceding to their demands. Indeed, might there not be some satisfaction in the act? He had seen so much suffering of late. He wanted to be cleansed of it. Anything they asked, within reason, he would comply with; anything to avoid dying like the others. He'd even give back the land.
It was a rough ride, and his morose companion com- plained often and incoherently. Locke turned a deaf ear. There was no time for loitering. Their noisy progress, the jeep engine complaining at every new acrobatic required of it, brought the jungle alive on every side, a repertoire of wails, whoops and screeches. It was an urgent, hungry place, Locke thought: and for the first time since setting foot on this sub-continent he loathed it with all his heart. There was no room here to make sense of events; the best that could be hoped was that one be allowed a niche to breathe awhile between one squalid flowering and the next.
Half an hour before nightfall, exhausted by the journey, they came to the outskirts of the village. The place had altered not at all in the meagre days since he'd last been here, but the ring of huts was clearly deserted. The doors gaped; the communal fires, always alight, were ashes. There was neither child nor pig to turn an eye towards him as he moved across the compound. When he reached the centre of the ring he stood still, looking about him for some clue as to what had happened there. He found none, however. Fatigue irade him foolhardy. Mustering his fractured strength, he shouted into the hush:
'Where are you?'
Two brilliant red macaws, finger-winged, rose screeching from the trees on the far side
of the village. A few moments after, a figure emerged from the thicket of balsa and jacaranda. It was not one of the tribe, but Dancy. He paused before stepping fully into sight; then, recognising Locke, a broad smile broke his face, and he advanced into the compound. Behind him, the foliage shook as others made their way through it. Tetelman was there, as were several Norwegians, led by a man called Bj0rnstr0m, whom Locke had encountered briefly at the trading post. His face, beneath a shock of sun-bleached hair, was like cooked lobster.
'My God,' said Tetelman, 'what are you doing here?'
'I might ask you the same question,' Locke replied testily.
Bj0rnstr0m waved down the raised rifles of his three companions and strode forward, bearing a placatory smile.
'Mr Locke,' the Norwegian said, extending a leather-gloved hand. 'It is good we meet.'
Locke looked down at the stained glove with disgust, and Bj0rnstr0m, flashing a self-admonishing look, pulled it off. The hand beneath was pristine.
'My apologies,' he said. 'We've been working.'
'At what?' Locke asked, the acid in his stomach edging its way up into the back of his throat.
Tetelman spat. 'Indians,' he said.
'Where's the tribe?' Locke said.
Again, Tetelman: 'Bj0rnstr0m claims he's got rights to this territory ...'
'The tribe,' Locke insisted. 'Where are they?'
The Norwegian toyed with his glove.
'Did you buy them out, or what?' Locke asked.
'Not exactly,' Bj0rnstr0m replied. His English, like his profile, was impeccable.
'Bring him along,' Dancy suggested with some enthusiasm. 'Let him see for himself.'
Bj0rnstr0m nodded. 'Why not?' he said. 'Don't touch anything, Mr Locke. And tell your carrier to stay where he is.'
Dancy had already about turned, and was heading into the thicket; now Bj0rnstr0m did the same, escorting Locke across the compound towards a corridor hacked through the heavy foliage. Locke could scarcely keep pace; his limbs were more reluctant with every step he took. The ground had been heavily trodden along this track. A litter of leaves and orchid blossoms had been mashed into the sodden soil.
