King Kong

by Christopher Golden

  Ben Hayes had abandoned his homeland, venturing out to sea because, among other things, he longed to remain in those blank spaces upon the map, and it was getting so that the sea was the only one left.

  Jimmy had grown thoughtful as he considered the first mate’s words. After a moment he said, “It’s not an adventure story, is it, Mr. Hayes?”

  Hayes studied the boy’s eyes, saw the light of understanding there, and imagined just what must be going through the boy’s head. “No, Jimmy. It’s not.”

  Together, they turned to look up at the grim, graven features of the statues, and for a time, neither said a word.

  The top of the stairs gave way to a landing with a vaulted, cavernous ceiling. The daylight that Denham had originally thought meant the end of the tunnel came from a hole high above them, but it provided enough light to continue on, enough illumination to see what they had entered.

  Ahead, there was some kind of ancient burial chamber.

  The smell of the sea permeated the place, but beneath that there was something else. The dust of centuries. The withered bones of another age. Denham led the way along the path and in the dim light they could make out tombs in the walls on either side. Some of them were broken, and in the burial niches inside he caught glimpses of mummified skeletons, remnants of skin like parchment paper and small tufts of wiry white hair still clinging to mud-colored skulls.

  The dead seemed to watch in silence as they passed, as though they were the guardians of this place. To Denham, it felt as though they were traveling on a journey through time from present to past.

  He came to a break in the path, a crevasse in the solid rock of the cliff. A bamboo bridge spanned the gap, and he wondered how long ago it had been constructed and whether or not it was possible that it would still hold everyone.

  No time to hesitate. If Denham allowed his companions or the sailors to see him pause, they might question the safety of that bridge. And nothing could stop him, now. Not when he could see more stairs ahead, and the true light of day at the top of them, streaming in from somewhere close.

  He had to see what was out there—the monstrous roar that had come from the jungle still echoed in his ears.

  Denham led them across the bridge, which creaked and strained but held firm. They followed him up those stairs and soon the burial chamber was left behind. At the top of the stairs, the exit had once been elegant, vaulted and arched, carved from stone with the same skill and craftsmanship as the idols that were all over these ruins. But some time ago, it had caved in and huge blocks of stone now were piled in their path.

  But there was enough room to climb through.

  Denham began to make his way up and the others followed. Carefully they moved over the blockade, quiet and tense. On the other side, the sky was gray, hung low with heavy clouds and some dark and threatening rain. He took a few steps forward, heard the others clambering down the collapsed rocks behind him, and held up a hand to caution them to silence.

  Thunder rumbled overhead and he could feel it in his bones. One by one, Herb, Preston, Jack, Ann, Mike, Bruce, and the two sailors who’d accompanied them made it over the rock fall and emerged from the ruined tunnel mouth. They were on the crest of a hill. The cliff behind them was a sheer drop to the rocky beach, but ahead it sloped down at an angle, still intimidating but not impossible.

  Cautious, keeping low, Denham hurried to an outcropping of stone to get a vantage point from which he could see what lay down that slope. The others followed, but by then Denham had nearly forgotten they were there.

  The rest of the plateau spread out in front of them. The burial chamber in the tunnel they had just emerged from was only the beginning, or perhaps even some spillover, for what lay below was a true necropolis, an ancient burial ground with stone mausoleums and tombs that were huge and intricate, clearly of the same period as the ancient culture responsible for the ruins, and like the final resting place of the last souls of that civilization.

  Many of the tombs had been smashed open, others reduced to rubble.

  It was not the dead that made him catch his breath now, though.

  Spread amongst the necropolis was a crude shanty town, a village of meager huts crafted from bamboo and grass. Denham was well-traveled, and could tell this culture was indeed far more recent, and devoid of any of the sophistication of the civilization that had once thrived here. It was also devoid of any sign of life.

  “It’s deserted,” Preston remarked.

  “Of course it’s deserted,” Denham hastily replied. “Use your eyes, Preston. The place is a ruin! It’s been abandoned for hundreds of years. Nobody lives here.”

  Denham was puzzled. The question of the fate of the ancient tribe of Skull Island was put aside for the moment in favor of the more pressing mystery…how had this other village sprung up? They weren’t descended from the ancients, for they would have had to devolve. All he could think was that they might have been some kind of amalgamation of peoples who had been shipwrecked here in more recent centuries, maybe all of them coming together to create a new tribe, a new culture.

  Surely, the people who built ramshackle grass huts could not have built the wall that even now he could not help but stare at. On the far side of the plateau, it rose skyward, towering over the village and the ruins of the graves of ancients—a huge structure that bisected the island, running off into the ocean on one side and into the jungle on the other.

  A wide staircase ran through the village up a slope to an enormous door in the wall. All along the top of the wall there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of huge bamboo spikes that jutted out from the structure. From a distance, Denham had not been able to make out what they were, only that they had been spiny, like the quills of a porcupine. Up close it was plain they were spears of bamboo, though he could not guess at their purpose.

  He would relish hearing a real anthropologist’s or archeologist’s take on all this one day.

  Another bestial roar rose from the jungle, somewhere in the heart of the island. Denham glanced over the top of the wall, momentarily distracted.

  When he lowered his gaze, he nearly leaped backward in fright.

  A small child stood on the dusty path before them, a girl with ebon skin, clad in a dark, heavy garment that covered her front and back, but was open at the sides, held only by a few strings. The girl had strange, almost feral eyes. She slowly raised an arm and pointed at the group huddled behind the rocks, as though frozen in fear of them.

  Denham stood up. “I’ll handle this.”

  He moved out from behind the rocks and started down the path into the not-so-deserted village. The child stared at him but Denham reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a bar of Hershey’s Chocolate. His own mouth watered at the thought of the candy, but it was no longer for him. Thunder boomed above once more and he could feel the electricity of the storm brewing in the air, the cool dampness of the rain about to fall.

  Then he felt the first drops.

  He waved the candy in front of the child. “Look, chocolate. You like chocolate?”

  Her were wide and unblinking, drilling into him.

  The rain began to fall.

  “Good to eat!” Denham said, thrusting it at the child again. “Good to eat! Take it…take it!”

  The girl stepped back. Denham felt a flash of concern. He wanted to be understood. Getting off on the wrong foot here could be dangerous. He reached out and grabbed the child by the wrist and attempted to press the chocolate bar into her hand.

  She struggled to break free from him, crying out.

  Denham froze at the sound, knowing it would bring others. Sure enough, villagers begin to melt out of the shadows of huts and tombs alike, gray ghosts in the rain, old and young, their flesh glistening oil black. They wore very little, mostly scraps of animal hide. Some had faces etched with decorative scars or punctured with sharp bones that jutted from their skin. Others wore bits of bone around their necks or in their matted hair.

  A ripp
le of panic went through Denham and he struggled with the child, trying to explain by gesture if not by word. Hollow-eyed women stared at him balefully.

  The girl sank her teeth into his wrist, snapping like a wolf. Denham let out a yell of surprise and pain, releasing his grip. The child ran off and for a moment he could only look at the villagers who had started to gather before him. Retreat was considered and then discarded. There was no way he could, or would, walk away from this.

  Instead, he turned and gestured for Jack, Ann, and the others who were watching from the rocks, to come forward. They stared at him as they nervously emerged and came up to join him.

  “It’s all right,” he assured them. “It’s just a bunch of women and kids.”

  Ann, Jack, and Preston were in the front, but suddenly Mike lurched past them, as though in a rush to join Denham. Ann glanced at the sound man, concern etching her features.

  “Mike?” she began.

  The sound man gasped, staring around at them with a fearful, helpless expression, and then he fell face forward onto the ground, revealing the jagged spear that jutted from his back.

  Denham cursed inwardly and his breath caught. He had thought the situation in his control and it had just been torn away from him. He and Jack both spun to see where the deadly attack had originated from.

  Ann stepped back in horror and screamed.

  The terrifying jungle roar filled the village as if in answer to Ann’s cry, an echo of her once more. But it was louder and closer this time, as though whatever creature had uttered it had been summoned by her and was even now drawing nearer.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  Native men sprang from behind rocks and in the shadows of tombs, raced out from amongst the women and children and from the huts. Ann cried out in alarm, but there was nothing any of them could do as they were quickly swept into a maelstrom of rough, powerful hands and jabbing spears, pushed and pulled by the primitive mob. Denham was tossed into a churning, stormy ocean of anger, and then spun around as all motion ceased.

  An old woman now appeared, painted with strange symbols and decorated with bones and feathers and small artifacts Denham did not recognize. There was a crown on her head that looked like it was made from small finger bones, and her skin was like worn leather. In the rain, her thin, white hair plastered to her skull, she had the aspect of a witch out of Shakespeare. Her fingernails were like claws, yellow with age. The crone wore a cloak partially made of feathers, and around her neck hung the skull of some large bird.

  With the deference the rest of the villagers paid her, it was clear she was some sort of matriarch, a figure of power amongst them. In Denham’s experience, primitive tribes often had a shaman, a being supposedly in tune with mystical power and nature, but they were always male. Still, this woman seemed to hold a similar place here, and so he instantly thought of her as some sort of…sha-woman.

  The matriarch ignored Denham and focused on Ann. She muttered what had to be curses and spat, her eyes burning with dark fury. Ann began to back away from her, and many of the old villagers began to rock and wail in unison. They bent to gather mud from the rain-spattered earth and smeared it upon their faces, across their screeching mouths. Denham could only imagine he had found himself on an island asylum, a place filled with only the mad and the damned.

  Bruce shouted at some of the natives, struggling as they held onto him, dragging him forward as though about to offer him to the sha-woman as some sort of prize. Jack reached for Ann and pulled her close, trying to protect her. Denham was heartened by the sight, but it was bittersweet, for he knew there was nothing any of them could do against these numbers, not with only their fists as weapons.

  Denham started shouting at the sha-woman, at the natives, trying to make them understand that he and his friends had come in peace. They only wanted to talk, and if they were not welcome, they would leave. Yes, it was most certainly time to leave now.

  But it was also clear that was not in the plans.

  Denham’s head thundered with the shrieking of the natives, their language gibberish to him. The rain pelted him, cold and cruel, and the ground darkened with it.

  He heard someone shout his name and turned to see one of the sailors, Pardue, dragged through the rain. In the blink of an eye, Pardue was forced to his knees, his head pushed down on a flat stone slab, and then even as Denham realized what was happening, the natives clubbed the sailor to death, shattering his skull, pulping his entire head.

  No! This wasn’t happening. They were supposed to be shooting a film! This was a nightmare…this couldn’t be!

  In the churning confusion, the sha-woman continued to scream at Ann, voice rising, becoming hysterical.

  “Larri yu sano korê…kweh yonê kah’weh ad-larr…torê Kong!” the sha-woman chanted, pointing at Ann and darting her head forward in a menacing, mocking sort of dance. “Yu tore. Kweh norê dahah ad-larr Kong-ka!”

  Denham had no idea what she was saying, but through gesture and intonation it was clear that the villagers thought Ann had done something. From the way they looked fearfully at the wall, and the stress upon the word, he had an idea that whatever it had been built to hold back, they were afraid it was coming.

  What was she saying then? That Ann, somehow, had summoned it?

  Then he remembered Ann’s screams on the beach, and the horrible, beastly roars that had answered back. And the last one, which had sounded so much closer. Even then he’d thought it was as though her screams had called to the beast from the jungle on the other side of the wall.

  Two men were dead, their murders ghastly and savage, and the survivors were all about to share their fate. But Carl Denham could not resist wishing he could see what it was they all feared, what they thought Ann had called.

  Then the islanders tore her out of Jack’s grasp, and he cursed himself for a fool for even thinking such thoughts. Jack fought them but the natives only pulled him away. Ann struggled and Denham found himself silently hoping she would not scream again.

  The sha-woman continued her accusatory chant. Denham abruptly tried to free himself from his captors. His arms were twisted, his muscles burning with pain. But in the same moment, Jack tore loose and he rushed toward Ann. Denham felt a surge of hope and struggled as well, hoping to help him, but as Jack attacked the islanders, fists flying, one of them loomed up behind him and clubbed him in the back of the head.

  He dropped like a stone, sprawled on the ground, moaning.

  Ann screamed at last, and it felt to Denham as though every one of them, islander and visitor alike, froze, holding their breaths. Fearful glances turned toward the wall.

  In the distance, the beast roared. But not so distant at all, really. Far closer even than before. And from the way the sha-woman rounded on Ann, then, fury in her eyes, he knew he had been right. They were blaming her. And they were all terrified of whatever it was on the other side of that wall.

  Denham tore his hand free and slammed a fist into the face of an islander. But there were so many of them that new hands grasped him, gripping him, forcing him to stagger forth until he stumbled and went down on his knees.

  He twisted his head to one side as they thrust him forward and he caught the copper scent of blood a second before they pressed his face against the hot, gory mess left behind by Pardue’s murder. Denham struggled, shouted at the villagers, at the heavens, at the beast beyond the wall. It was over. He was going to die here.

  Clubs rose into the air.

  A gunshot echoed off the wall and the ruins and the rain.

  Hands released him and Denham spilled over onto his side and started scrambling away from his captors. Englehorn and Hayes led a group of armed sailors down into the village. The natives were at first stunned, but then they scattered, disappearing into the rain and the shadows from which they’d emerged.

  Captain Englehorn strode over to Denham and roughly hauled him to his feet. His words were a snarl, an unfriendly rescuer.

  “Seen enough?�
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  14

  THIS WAS THE MOMENT. Englehorn could feel it. The Venture was like an extension of his own body, his own flesh and blood, and as she swayed with the crashing waves and scraped on the rocks below, shifting…shifting…he knew that they had reached a critical point.

  The captain stood on the deck of his ship in the dark, with stars strewn across the sky above and the tumultuous sea below. His pulse drummed in his temples.

  “Lighten the ship!” he called, shouting to be heard over the howling of the wind and the waves pounding the hull. Members of the crew hurried from belowdecks, carrying anything they could lift. He’d been shouting at them for several minutes, but he wasn’t about to stop now.

  “Anything that’s not bolted down goes overboard!” Englehorn roared.

  Lumpy, Jimmy, Choy, and every hand he could sacrifice to the effort were on deck now. They went to the railing and tossed ballast over into the churning sea. Tables, chests, even kitchen equipment went into the water. Englehorn grimaced, for he knew how difficult it must be for them to part with some of the things that were being lost. Lumpy himself had thrown a heavy mixer from the galley into the surf.

  But they had no other choice. As each wave struck the Venture, she groaned and scraped and shifted against the undersea rocks upon which she was stuck. The aftermath of the previous night’s storm had made the tide higher than it would ordinarily be, and even that wasn’t enough. They had to lighten the ship. If they didn’t get off the rocks right now, he didn’t know how many days it would be before the conditions were so favorable again.

  This was the moment.

  Alone in her cabin, Ann pulled a robe tightly around her, covering the satin slip she had put on after washing up. Jack was still unconscious but Lumpy had assured her that he would be all right. Jimmy had offered to stay with her, but she didn’t want to be spoken to or to discuss the day’s events. She needed solitude.

  Or so she’d thought.

  Now she wished she had not insisted. It was worse, being alone. She would have been better off with a distraction. If things were not so chaotic, if they were not all working to get the ship off the reef, she would have gone up to the mess to laugh and joke with the sailors.