Bed of Nails

by Michael Slade

  I’m a free spirit.

  And I have all the time in the world.

  That’s how I currently find myself in the yard out front of the Fiji mission. This mission church is similar to the one where I grew up in Mission, British Columbia, and to the one my ancestors built in the Cook Islands, back in times parallel to these. It’s a white clapboard chapel with a steeple over the door. The god-house beyond the stream is a thatched temple with a heap of sun-bleached bones piled out back. The skull of each bakola eaten by the cannibal king—smashed open to add its brain to past feasts—sits atop a separate stone set in a line along the beach. History will later record the number of stones as 872.

  Now the frantic rhythm of beating drums drowns out the masthead screams. This is a portentous sound, never to be forgotten, for the pounding of hollow bamboo stamping tubes on board answered by drums on the beach is heard solely before a village feast. Thudda-thudda ... thudda-thudda ... My heart thuds in time with the driving beat as the long pigs come into view.

  The enemy dead are sitting up in the prow of each canoe. Arrayed in two rows along the bow deck, the corpses squat on their hindquarters with their knees cocked up and their hands lashed together around their jackknifed legs so there is space enough in the hind part of the bend for a long pole. Side by side, each body supports the others as the bakolas sit strung along the poles like shish kebabs. Vermilion and soot were used to paint the naked dead bound for the god-house ovens, so they still look like they did alive in battle.

  The god of war has triumphed.

  Times are good.

  The beaching of the canoes sparks activity on deck. Unstrung, the bakolas are thrown into the surf for cleansing and purification. To keep the corpses from floating away, the Bauan warriors link each one to its boat by a vine stem tied around one wrist. As for the fifty living children hoisted up to the mastheads as victory flags, the rocking motion of the canoes has knocked some out, silencing their piercing cries. Conscious or unconscious, down they drop as the hoists are cut, then each is thrown into the water to sink or swim. Those who stumble ashore face a deadlier threat, as Bauan boys learn the art of Fijian warfare by firing arrows at them or bashing their brains out with clubs.

  “‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’” the reverend prays as he holds a Christian cross high at the mission door.

  “Fat chance,” I say.

  He turns to frown blankly at me. No doubt he’s wondering how in hell I materialized in his yard.

  “Magick,” I offer.

  What little clothing the warriors wear is shed as they jump off the boats and onto the sand. There, they begin to dance the cibi in unison in front of the god-house. Hundreds of naked cannibals strut their stuff for a horde of stripping women, the ceremony accompanied by the erotic rhythm from several villagers hammering on the end of a hollow log. Each trying to outdo the others in ferocious overkill, the men have painted their faces and bodies with hideous patterns. Amid terrific yells that punctuate their war chants, the victory dance is made up of a series of threatening and boastful poses with bloody clubs and spears. Their arms extended, some fall backwards onto the beach, only to spring forward to regain their feet. Others flaunt erections raised by all the excitement.

  Now it’s the women’s turn to dance the lewd dele. The only Fijian dance for which they strip bare, it praises the prowess of their heroes and insults the bakolas. The men haul the bodies out of the surf and lay them face up on the sand. While their breasts bob to the beat of the drums and their hips undulate, the women dance suggestively to mock the corpses. Killing and eating the Rewa isn’t enough, so they prod the genitals of the dead with sticks as they sing.

  I take note.

  For the Odyssey.

  Despite the overpowering heat, the reverend sweats it out in his suit of Bible black, as if the stifling garment is the armor of God. Watching him stare in horror at the ritual on the beach, I suspect he’s more affronted by the sex than the violence.

  “Father forgive them …” he mumbles.

  His words trail off.

  “Are we having fun yet?” I jest.

  Brandishing their clubs and tossing them into the air like jugglers, some of the warriors lead a parade up the beach to the god-house while others drag the bakolas facedown through the sand like logs to be fed to a fire. The cannibal king and his high priest stand waiting at the temple. Both men are larded with layers of flab from lifetimes of consuming the fatty flesh of other humans. The bakolas are flung at the feet of the cannibal king as the high priest dedicates each in turn to the Bauan god of war.

  The braining stone—the vatu ni mena—is a heavy column that has been erected on the grounds of the temple. As each bakola falls prey to the appetite of the god, his brain is sacrificed to the stone. A pair of burly islanders each grab hold of an arm and a leg to lift the corpse from the ground, then, using the body as a human battering ram, run with it at top speed to smash the skull open against the phallic column, the way they crack coconuts for their meat.

  Crackkk!

  Crackkk!

  Crackkk!

  The burly batterers carry the corpse back to the high priest. So fat he finds it difficult to bend over the remains, the priest combs hair away from the crown of the shattered skull so that his fingers, plump as sausages, can pluck shards of bone out of the tissue that has been bared by the braining against the stone. With a blade, he cuts the organ free from its calcium confines and drops it into the yawning mouth of the brain pot close at hand. There, the brains will boil in blood for the next few hours, until the flesh is reduced to a simmering savory stew swimming in a rich red gravy that’s fit for a god of war.

  A god who is fed through the mouths of the priest and the king.

  To squeals of joy from the naked women crowding in front of the god-house, the priest slices the genitals off each enemy warrior. Females are barred from partaking in the cannibal feast, so they get their kicks in vicarious ways.

  On the bank of the narrow stream flowing between the god-house and the mission, at the back corner of the temple grounds, grows a sacred grove. The akau tabu—the “forbidden tree”—stands in the center of the grove, surrounded by a ring of shaddock trees. The forks of the shaddock trees are wedged with trophy bones from previous cannibal feasts. I can make out the bones that garnish the nearest trophy tree: two thighbones, a jawbone, a shoulder blade, and several ribs. Evidently, they date from a while back, for the bark of the tree has grown to incorporate them into its trunk.

  The akau tabu is a large ironwood tree selected for its conspicuous location. From its limbs dangle countless scraps of skin that, if this were the Wild West, could be scalps. Belying that, however, is the kinky, curly nature of the hair, which matches that in the pile of sex organs sliced off the bakolas by the high priest.

  When the pile is big enough to warrant a walk to the grove, one of the lesser priests conveys the genitals to the genital tree and proceeds to hang them along the hairy branches like Monday-morning washing along a clothesline. As a new supply of forbidden fruit is added to the already abundant tree, I watch the reactions of some of the women who cry out with ecstasy, and wonder what fantasies pass through the minds of these Eves in Eden.

  Cannibalism and castration.

  What a heady mix.

  Those rituals concluded, it’s time to cook the feast. The butchers of the temple have dug lovo—sanctified pit ovens—in the ground around the god-house. One by one, the brainless bodies stripped of their genitals are lugged by the burly pair to the i sava, a large flat dissecting stone. On it, the bamboo knives of the butchers go to work, segmenting the bodies into prime cuts. First, the heads are severed, low down on the neck so the shoulders of the torso are flat. The heads are sent back to the high priest, who keeps track of which bakolas the king eats to make sure that their skulls are added to the line of stones. Next, the limbs are cut off joint by joint: the hands at the wrists, the arms at the elbows and the armpits, the feet at the ankles,
the legs at the knees and the groin. Assistants grab each piece as it falls away from the skill of the chief carver’s knife and pass it off to an assembly line that ends at the ovens. Along the way, the raw flesh is wrapped in plantain leaves, and the most succulent segments—the thighs and the arms—land in special pits. Particularly with long pig, those at the top eat high on the hog.

  The culinary art of the chief carver holds me in awe. The knife he wields is a blade of split bamboo. Naturally effective for gross surgery, it is kept razor-sharp by tearing strips off the edge. This the carver does on the upswing with his teeth, and soon the rhythm of slice and tear has him drenched from head to toe in blood. He licks his lips as he works.

  Butchering the torso is a sloppier task. Except for the heart—since the mana is there—the vital organs and the entrails are thrown aside. The discards are quickly gobbled up by pigs, which forage around the temple to scavenge scraps.

  It occurs to me that there is irony here. “Long pig”—puaka balava—is strictly for men, while “real pig”—puaka dina—is fit for women to eat. But if the pigs around the temple can eat human meat, why isn’t it taboo for women to eat the pigs?

  That thought is broken by a shout from the king.

  “I sigana!”

  The big guy is hungry. He doesn’t want to wait while bonfires heat the stones that go into the ovens.

  To tide the king over, hors d’oeuvres are served. What elevates his majesty above his common subjects is the luxury of never having to feed himself. That’s what the subservient women who make up his harem are for. In calling for i sigana—the choicest of pieces—the king sends his female retinue scurrying to the high priest, who harvests dainty morsels from his pile of severed heads.

  “Vinaka! Vinaka!” extols the cannibal king after he is fed eyeballs freshly plucked from their sockets by a nude girl who drops them down his throat like peeled grapes.

  As canapés, he is served the tips of several noses nipped off by the high priest and roasted like marshmallows on a stick over a fire lit to heat the oven stones. To feed the meat into the king’s mouth in such a way that it won’t touch his lips and be defiled, the server uses a peculiar wooden fork, a culanibakola. That’s because the flesh isn’t just for him but is also being fed directly to the kalougata, the spirit of the god of war responsible for the victory, who is physically present within the king at a cannibal feast.

  The eating is in his honor, and the god wants his share.

  The reverend, it would seem, can take no more of this blasphemy. He and the cannibal king are locked in a tug-of-war for the souls of these Fijians. The man of God still stands at the chapel door with his Christian cross held high in the air, as if that should be enough to bring the pagans to their knees. Inside the threshold of the church, I can just make out the sickly form of the old missionary on his deathbed. When he first set foot on this island years ago, he introduced a plague of biblical proportions in the guise of European diseases. But now the old man is stricken with one of the local infections, and the reverend sent to replace him lacks the clout of a new germ-infested God.

  “In the name of the Father …” the reverend shouts.

  Some of the cannibals turn.

  “In the name of the Son …”

  Attracting more attention.

  “In the name of the Holy Ghost …”

  Including the cannibal king.

  “Uh-oh,” I say. “You’ve really done it now.”

  The advantage of being a time traveler to the past is that you enjoy the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight. What the reverend has yet to understand is what he’s up against. Historians will later unravel the inherent logic of Fijian cannibalism. I know, because I digested their books before I time-warped here.

  Veikanikani—cannibalism—is founded on the worship of ancestor spirits. Spirits reside in the spirit world of Bulu and manifest themselves on this island through the cannibal king. As such, this cannibal king is a living god who, in exchange for raw women supplied to his harem in the form of island virgins, imports a plentiful supply of bakolas to bake into cooked men, which the islanders can offer as sacrifices to the spirits of Bulu.

  Any man, if his spirit survives, can enter the spirit world. In battle, ancestor spirits guide their descendants. The spirit of a body clings to the corpse for four days after death. Sacrificing and eating an enemy’s body destroys his spirit before it can enter the spirit world to become a power source for those trying to eat you. Killing means nothing. Eating brings glory. The more damage done to the bakolas, the better. Powerful is the cannibal king whose mana—effectiveness—is fed to his subjects. And nothing brings home the bacon in that regard better than long pig from victory in war.

  That might not make sense to the reverend, but it makes sense to me.

  Different countries. Different customs. Different gods.

  “Vakatotoga!” the cannibal king yells, pointing one of his chubby fingers this way.

  The big guy is really pissed off. The reverend has riled him to a pique of fiendish ferocity with that holy-roller rhetoric beneath the Christian cross. True, the missionary may be a disciple of the Lord, but the cannibal king is a living god among these man-eaters, and also the waqa—the vehicle—for the god of war.

  “Vakatotoga!”

  My blood runs cold.

  I know the meaning of that word, and it scares the living bejesus out of me.

  Somehow I doubt the reverend’s cross will offer much of a shield against this horde of naked, war-painted cannibals thundering toward the mission, their feet splashing through the stream that separates there from here, each brandishing a weapon of some kind: spear; sling; bow; or club in one of two sizes, the heavy, wooden, two-handed type that pounds you into a pulp or the smaller missile club for throwing. It doesn’t bode well that some warriors are still erect from having mixed sex with death, and now here’s an opportunity to show off for the womenfolk.

  Sorry, Rev.

  I’m outta here.

  Vakatotoga, I leave for you.

  With a jerk, I feel myself yanked back into the astral plane as that cosmic yo-yo retreats through the humming wormhole in space-time and returns me to the here and now of Seattle today …

  Suddenly, the spark of consciousness returned to the Goth’s eyes. The psycho was back at the writing desk that faced the mirror that could have been a window into the occult realm. The stench of insanity faded as the killer’s psychosis slipped back into a latent state. The clock on the desk read 2:43. In fifteen minutes, the panel was set to convene in Tomb A. “How to Write a Horror Best-seller: Is There a Demon You Can Sell Your Soul To?”

  The sketching pad still lay on the desk, but the top sheet was no longer blank. Judging from what was drawn on the paper, it had gone time-traveling too. The Christian mission in Fiji was rendered in minute detail, as were all the atrocities of the cannibal feast. In going back to do research for next week’s Odyssey, the Goth had chosen Fiji from among the many cannibal islands of the South Pacific because Fiji was the source of eyewitness accounts dating back to the mid-1800s, a time when and the place where Western explorers recorded the utter horror of vakatotoga. Because vakatotoga was the fate planned for the Mountie, the Goth’s research into how to perpetrate it would require another trip.

  But now it was time to jab the hook through the cop’s cheek and begin to reel him in.

  The Goth cleaned up and left the room.

  HALO OF FLIES

  “Hello, everybody. My name’s Wes Grimmer, and I’m the author of this book, Halo of Flies.”

  The lawyer-turned-writer held up his just-published novel so that the conventioneers packed into Tomb A could see it. The buzz from the earlier confrontation had lured them here in droves, probably hoping to witness one attorney-cum-scribe throwing a punch at the other. If nothing else, it was sure to be a hot debate.

  “We’re missing a moderator,” Wes said, “so I’ll get things going. The topic we’re here to discuss is ‘How to Wr
ite a Horror Best-seller: Is There a Demon You Can Sell Your Soul To?’ My answer is yes. That demon is you.”

  Scattered laughs.

  “How many of you here are really serious about being writers?”

  A sea of waving hands shot up from the audience.

  “Sinclair Lewis asked the same question of a room full of aspiring writers when Columbia University invited him to deliver a lecture on the writer’s craft. On seeing the hands go up, Lewis said, ‘Well, why the hell aren’t you all home writing?’ The lecture over, he walked back to his seat and sat down.”

  Laughter.

  “Imagine that I have hurled the same scolding at you, so you’ve gone home to sit at your desk and write that best-seller. What are you going to write about so it rings true?”

  Again, Wes held up Halo of Flies.

  “I don’t know what you’ll write about,” he said, “but I do know where you’ll find it.”

  “Hold the book higher,” Bret Lister piped in, “and repeat the title. Your blatant self-promotion is too humble, Wes.”

  “Here we go,” Ralph muttered to Zinc. The cops were standing at the back of the room.

  “Have some couth, Bret. You’ll get your chance.”

  “When hell freezes over, if you keep hogging the mike.”

  The two men could not have sat farther apart and still been at the same table. The table was up on a dais at the front of the convention hall, with four chairs arranged behind it. Wes sat at the left-hand flank, Bret sat at the right-hand flank, and the chairs between them sat vacant. Heavyset and brawny, Wes—in his early thirties—was at least ten years junior to Bret. Though this was a horror convention, Wes wore a blue blazer with a tie, as if to let everyone know that he was a high-powered courtroom titan in his other life. But so as not to seem completely out of place, he chose a silk tie hand-painted with the jacket of Halo of Flies. His toughness was topped off with a skinhead’s coif to give him the Vin Diesel look.