Box Set: Scary Stories- Vols. 3 & 4 (Chamber Of Horror Book 8)

by Billy Wells

  Five minutes later, he found the perfect shelter in the jagged rock face of the mountain and crawled inside for the night.

  The next morning when he opened his eyes, he saw the barrels of three soldiers’ rifles pointed at his face. Trying to remain calm, since they hadn’t slit his throat while he slept, he said, “Look, fellas, you don't need to point your weapons at me. I mean you no harm. I’m not armed. I made it to your island in a life raft.”

  The men in uniform stared at him blankly and said nothing.

  Clete continued, “I’m sorry if I've intruded on your island paradise, but I had no choice. If you contact the authorities so they can come and get me, I'll be out of your hair in no time. My father will even give you a little cash for your trouble.”

  During his explanation, Clete noticed the three men with the rifles were extremely old for soldiers. They kept standing with their weapons pointing at him, apparently waiting for further orders.

  “Do you speak English?” Clete asked, hoping to find a way to communicate.

  They said nothing.

  Suddenly another elderly, more decorated soldier Clete assumed was an officer appeared and stood over him. He said something Asian to the others and they saluted him. Two of the men with rifles grabbed Clete and dragged him to his feet. Wrenching his hands behind his back, they bound his wrists with ropes and led him away to a path leading deeper into the jungle.

  Clete repeated what he'd said initially, but the soldiers still didn't appear to understand English. They spoke an oriental language among themselves. He thought it was Japanese, but he wasn’t sure.

  Finally, they arrived at a walled village that reminded Clete of the forts he’d seen in old western movies. He saw tired soldiers in tattered uniforms milling about as his captors escorted him to a holding cell in a small outbuilding. He could see the crude fort had seen better days. Almost every roof sagged. Several had gaping holes in them. The construction of the walls appeared extremely rudimentary. Not a single nail, bolt, or piece of hardware was visible. The rough-hewn timbers were bound together with thin flexible vines and sealed with dried mud.

  Clete remained stoic as he looked at their archaic construction techniques. He knew insulting the old soldiers would not help his cause, so he bit his tongue and tried not to snicker.

  As he sat on the ground inside his cell, he noticed the rifles the men carried looked like something from World War II. He'd seen this type of weapon in old movies, but again, they were laughable and obsolete compared to weapons today.

  He remembered his initial thought of being like Robinson Crusoe in a strange land. He hoped his man Friday would show himself soon before he died of boredom or was drawn and quartered by these old geezers for some bizarre reason he hadn’t determined as yet.

  He saw a shadow move across the ground, and looking up, he discovered the oldest and even more high ranking officer peering at him through the bars. This elderly old timer had three stars on his collar insignia.

  Clete knew it was futile, but he said cordially, “You must be the head man. I'm not familiar with your uniform and your medals…”

  The man said something Clete didn't understand and followed it with what sounded like a question himself.

  Clete shook his head and shrugged showing he didn't understand.

  What a fine mess this was. He was probably on an island inhabited by a giant beast, populated by old Japanese soldiers who didn't speak English, and they were hostile for some crazy reason. All the equipment he saw was ancient. He‘d never seen any of it before except in some old movie. There was no sign of a computer, phone, hardware, or even a walkie-talkie.

  Clete said, gesturing to his mouth, "I speak English. What language do you speak?"

  Three Stars looked at one of his men, said something, and the man ran into a building a hundred feet away. After a few seconds, he returned with a large dog-eared book and handed it to his superior.

  Three Stars opened it and showed a picture to Clete. It was a map of the world. He pointed to Japan and made a gesture for him to say where he was from.

  Clete reciprocated by pointing to the middle of the United States.

  The officer looked at where he'd pointed and closed the book. He didn't look happy.

  Clete didn't know why where he was from would be upsetting to the man, who turned briskly and stormed off.

  About midday, a short, slim soldier, who looked like he was at least seventy-five years old, placed a plate of some weird green stuff on the ground next to his cell and scurried off.

  The soldiers had removed the ropes that bound him when they placed him in the pathetic excuse for a cell, but they were still holding him prisoner for some reason. He reached through the wooden bars, picked up a stalk of the green stuff from the plate, and smelled it. It had a foul odor, but he was hungry, so he placed the stalk in his mouth and closed his eyes.

  He tried to pretend the morsel was a succulent piece of lobster tail from the Oyster Bar restaurant in Grand Central Terminal, but started retching after the first bite. Not only did the pretense fail entirely, the bitter taste was so disgusting, he puked it on the ground. Several soldiers milling about saw this, laughed heartily, and exchanged comments he didn’t understand.

  Clete didn't think anyone on the planet could swallow this inedible, smelly stalk. He didn’t understand why they would serve it to him unless it was a joke or some form of starvation technique to loosen his tongue.

  Then, he saw the three old soldiers, who laughed so hard at his expense, go to a nearby table, and pick up a similar plate of the stuff. All of them munched it down like broccoli or cauliflower with no problem. Could this really be what these people ate as a daily staple? And why was every soldier he saw old enough to be his great-grandfather? How long had these men been on this godforsaken island?

  While pondering these questions, Clete saw the nastiest looking, humongous centipede he’d ever seen skitter across the ground in front of his cell. Three of the soldiers saw it and dropped their plates like hot potatoes, and like their lives depended on it, leapt toward the enormous insect. They collided in midair, and two of them knocked heads and were momentarily dazed.

  The third soldier swooped up the creepy crawly, popped it into his mouth, and started chewing and slurping on it like it was the tastiest food he’d ever eaten. The look on his face was as if he had just tasted ambrosia from the gods. While the old codger savored the scrumptious delicacy Clete wouldn’t think of putting in his mouth, the other two decrepit soldiers pounced on him from behind and began to beat him to a senseless pulp. Despite the vicious battering, the semiconscious man lay there bruised and bloodied with a big smile on his face. Could food on the island be such a delicacy the old soldier would risk life and limb to horde an insect to eat all by himself? He felt a pang of apprehension as he contemplated what that might mean for him.

  Later that afternoon Three Stars came with a younger soldier of about sixty also sporting very few medals and stood outside Clete’s cell. The officer said something to him, and the younger man asked Clete in broken English, “Where other men?”

  “Other men?” Clete replied. “There are no other men. Like I said, I came to your island by myself in a life raft after my yacht sank.”

  The interpreter looks somewhat puzzled and didn't seem to understand what Clete had said. Three Stars saw this and asked the interpreter a question. After he shrugged his shoulders, the officer slapped him hard in the face.

  The interpreter gathered his composure and resuming a military posture, he turned back to Clete with the big welt on his cheek. “What rank, you?”

  “Hey. Read my lips. Like I told you, I’m not a soldier. I'm a civilian on vacation. I don’t have a rank. Could you please tell me your commanding officer’s name so I can try to communicate with him?”

  “Colonel Nakamura, commanding officer,” the younger man replied timidly. Then he interpreted for the colonel whose anger was rising. Nakamura slapped the soldier again and responded
gruffly.

  The interpreter turned back to Clete and barked, “You lie! Tell truth or be tortured.”

  Clete didn't know what to say. He knew now he‘d found an island populated with lunatics. He decided to ask some questions himself, “Who are you anyway? How long have you been here?” Clete made gestures with his hands to help the man, who was obviously struggling with English.

  “We Fifth Battalion, Japanese Army.”

  “And when did you come here?”

  “We come…. He paused, obviously trying to remember how to say the date, then said, “1944.”

  “You must not remember dates very well. You said 1944. That was forty-six years ago. That can’t be right,” Clete said shaking his head.

  “Nineteen forty-four,” the interpreter beamed. “That correct.”

  Puzzled, Clete asked, “Why have you stayed here so long?”

  “We wait for orders.”

  “Hey, man, I hate to break it to you and the colonel, but the war ended in 1945. The war is over.”

  “War over?” he repeated dumbfounded.

  “Right.” Clete nodded. “The Allies bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and you surrendered.”

  “Surrendered?” he replied in utter disbelief.

  “I must say your English is not so bad if you’ve been here almost fifty years. I'm surprised you remember anything,” Clete said shaking his head incredulously.

  The interpreter told the colonel what Clete had said, and after another verbal retort, Nakamura slapped him even harder than before and lambasted him for his apparent incompetence.

  The interpreter with blood running from his nose turned back to Clete. “Colonel say you lie. Japan never surrender. We invincible. You no eat until you speak truth.”

  “Well, that won't be any great loss, but I've told you the truth. Contact your superiors, for god’s sake, they’ll….”

  Clete stopped in midsentence. It finally dawned on him as the two men stormed off, these old soldiers had no way to communicate with anyone outside the island. He also realized the waves crashing continuously on the rocks probably prevented them from escaping on their own boats. They had no way of knowing the war was over, and he had no way to prove it to them.

  Clete sat on the ground thinking about all the lost years these men had given to their country. If they had been here that long, maybe they had exhausted the wildlife on the island and were reduced to eating these disgusting stalks and an occasional insect. He wondered why fish wouldn’t be a possibility. After all, they were in the middle of the ocean. He felt sorry for these poor bastards, and he also felt sorry for himself. Of all the islands in the Pacific, he’d had the misfortune to wash up on this one.

  These men were emaciated. Every one of them was a bag of bones. He winced at the thought of the geezer, who gobbled up the ugly centipede and the way the other two men had punished him for not sharing it.

  Another gaunt soldier kept leering at Clete with unnerving malice. This was understandable if the man considered Clete his enemy, but even scarier, was the ravenous hunger in his eyes when he looked at him.

  As the day dragged on and the sun beat down through the empty slats in the roof of his pitiful cell, Clete saw the same look on the face of every soldier who passed by. He estimated more than fifty soldiers had come to his cell to leer at him during the afternoon. What did they know he didn’t?

  Clete had a bad feeling. As the sun descended toward the horizon, he sat on the ground bemoaning his fate, obsessing about the soldiers’ ravenous looks, and what could be so big it would require a thirty-foot wall to keep it out.

  Suddenly he heard the sound of drums coming from the jungle and heard an agitated crowd of voices chanting and yelling. He saw the hungry look of the soldiers ogling him change abruptly. Their expressions told him it was time for them to be somewhere else. Except for the one guarding him with the rifle, the rest of the men rose and scurried off. Half an hour later, five soldiers he hadn’t seen before came to his cell, unlocked it, and motioned him to come with them.

  When Clete stepped from his cell, the soldiers tied his hands behind his back and led him off toward the jungle and the riotous din of a crowd being whipped into frenzy.

  As he approached the back wall of the fort, he saw about twenty soldiers atop the wall looking warily into the jungle with their rifles at the ready. Several more opened a rickety gate. The five soldiers escorting him pushed him through it.

  About fifty feet in front of him he saw a large band of pygmies, much like the ones he remembered from the movie, Tarzan the Ape Man with Johnny Weissmuller. They looked like miniature, but pudgy, warriors with distended stomachs holding their spears. Ten female pygmy prisoners with their hands tied behind them stood next to them. The leader with a weird headpiece motioned the women forward and several of the warriors shoved them into the clutches of a group Japanese soldiers, who surrounded them at gunpoint.

  Above the trees, Clete saw the sky was red from the gigantic bonfire burning in their village. There was no doubt the pygmies were planning to have a hot time in the old town tonight. Hopefully, not at his expense.

  Clete saw the Japanese colonel and the pygmy chieftain motioning to each other. Afterward, the soldiers prodded the ten female pygmies toward the path leading back to the fort. One of the soldiers jammed his rifle into Clete’s back and pushed him forward into the clutches of the pygmy warriors. The warriors shouted an unintelligible command, and threatening him with their spears, motioned him to follow.

  Clete heard the women screaming for help from the tribe, but their pleas went unanswered as the Japanese soldiers dragged them toward the fort.

  Clete assumed from the exchange he’d been traded for the ten pygmy women. He wondered if the decrepit Japs were going to fuck the women, eat them for dinner, or both. Then, he cringed, wondering what the pygmies were planning to do to him.

  After a short walk, the warriors led Clete into a clearing. He could see a village of thatched roofs in the distance. Far beyond, the giant wall loomed ominously ahead.

  As Clete followed the path toward the wild, frenzied celebration taking place around the raging bonfire, he saw stakes on both sides of the path with shrunken heads atop them.

  No matter how futile the attempt, he struggled even harder to escape his impending doom, but to no avail.

  As he grew closer and closer to the center of the village and the bonfire, he saw more scary warriors with bones through their noses, whooping, hollering, and closing around him. Some started bowing to him as if he were a God.

  Through the tangle of arms, Clete saw a huge black cauldron positioned over an enormous fire. Steam rose from it like billowing clouds as several natives dumped stalks like the ones they served him in his cell into the pot.

  Hundreds of pygmy warriors cheered and threw their arms into the air as he passed. Every one of them held a spear and appeared to be in a crazed stupor of some kind. Their eyes were blazing with pent-up fury and bloodlust.

  What a horrible way to die, cooked in a scalding cauldron, then picked to the bone by a bunch of cannibal pygmies. As he grew nearer, he heard the bubbling of water boiling inside the pot. He began to struggle even more with all his might. Try as he may, he couldn't break free.

  Over the sound of drums and chanting, Clete heard the rat-tat-tat of machine guns in the direction of the Japanese fort, then a series of catastrophic explosions. Black clouds of smoke billowed, followed by fingers of fire rising high into the sky.

  Then he heard the roar of helicopter blades coming from a remote section of the jungle. Looking in the direction of the sound, Clete saw the lights of the three choppers coming fast in the distance. Could this be a search party his father had sent for him when he discovered him missing for more than ten days? How could they have found him in thousands of miles of ocean? Then he remembered, the salesman, who sold him the yacht, mentioned both life rafts had tracking devices in them just for this purpose.

  The drums and the chanting ceased wh
en an amplified voice boomed from one of the helicopters hovering over the village:

  We are looking for Cletus Brown. We know he's among you. Release him immediately, and we will leave here without further disruption to your way of life.

  The fire in the distance was becoming a raging inferno, but was isolated by the beginning of the rocky base of the mountain and not spreading in their direction. The amplified voice continued:

  We have eliminated to the last man a retirement village of Japanese soldiers with a taste of their own medicine. A sneak attack and it was their bad luck it happened during one of their orgies. What you see burning is the final remnants of their fortress. We have learned from our persuasive interrogation techniques Cletus Brown was traded for a number of your women. We will shortly begin burning your village to the ground unless you release Cletus Brown immediately.

  Clete knew the hard-core professionals his father would have hired to rescue him would have slaughtered the Japanese old-timers without even breaking a sweat. These men, certainly mercenaries, would have the latest weaponry, night vision glasses, and sophisticated sensing devices far beyond anything the Japanese force had ever seen. He didn’t think the colonel would have surrendered even if they’d given him the opportunity no matter what the odds were against him. He was the kind of martyr who would order his soldiers to fight to the death for some kind of heroic principle Clete was too selfish to understand.

  The booming voice continued:

  Show me a sign you understand what I'm saying and return Cletus Brown to the beach where he came ashore immediately. Our wrath will be upon you if you have harmed Clete in any way. We will blow your island to kingdom come if you have taken his life. You have ten minutes to give me a sign before we open fire. Don’t be stupid.

  Clete looked at the bewildered faces of the pygmies, who apparently did not understand a word the man in the helicopter had said. They watched in awe at the fire burning on the outskirts of the island through the trees, and then dismissed it as something out of their control. Having no idea of the dire consequences awaiting them, they resumed their celebration and pushed Clete onward.