by Cave, Hugh
Serpents in the Sun
by Hugh B. Cave
First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
From an unpublished manuscript by Hugh B. Cave.
© 2011 Hugh B. Cave Irrevocable Trust.
Edited by Patricia Lee Macomber
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Publisher's Note:
I had the good fortune to meet Hugh B. Cave back in 1989 when Karl Wagner introduced us. I was putting together a Manly Wade Wellman tribute issue of my magazine, and Hugh was one of the most prolific authors of the pulp era. We hit it off so well that I followed up the Wellman issue with the Hugh B. Cave issue. The cover art was a painting Hugh had done of an amazing old woman he knew in Jamaica. His stories range from military propaganda, to South Seas Adventure, to mystery, and horror. He was one of the first white men to walk across the island of Haitii. He sat in on voodoo ceremonies before our knowledge of such things was more than the stuff of bad movies and mysterious legends.
And he owned a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. He built it into something, and he lost it to crazed governmental regimes. His money was tucked away in bureaucratic chains. He could spend it in Jamaica, but he couldn't stay there, and he was only allowed to bring out so much a year. His dream had become a nightmare, so he returned to America, and to the words.
I would hesitate to estimate how many stories Hugh B. Cave wrote. He started in the pulps, moved on to what he called "The Slicks," the Saturday Evening Post and Boy's Life. He wrote a small book that was included with the Post – "The Mission" – that was a huge success. His novel "The Cross and the Drum" is a wonderful story of a missionary's battle with local culture and religious beliefs. His horror stories and fantasy stories won him every award imaginable, from the World Fantasy Award for his collection Murgunstrumm & Others, to the Horror Writer's Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and the "Living Legend" award from the International Horror Guild.
His death was a blow to the world of fiction, and a personal loss to me, so when I got in contact with the trustee of his estate, Joe Testa, and found that there was an unpublished novel, I was thrilled. I am still thrilled, because now I have the opportunity to present this work to the world.
It is a touching, heart-wrenching story. The characters are drenched in very real history, and you feel their pain throughout a long, wonderful tapestry of words, woven only as a master storyteller could weave them. The book was scanned from an original manuscript, carefully reconstructed, and then edited by award-winning editor Patricia Lee Macomber.
Wherever Hugh has gone…I like to think he'd smile knowing the book was in my hands, and that now – I offer it into yours. The last published words, and testament of a great man with an even greater heart. Let me take you on a trip. Follow me to Hugh B. Cave's Jamaica. If you should see people, and places there that seem so real they come to life in your mind, you'll know that it's one of the visions he's shared from his life. Hugh was like that. You'll find him in the words.
From North Carolina
David Niall Wilson
June, 2011
This is for the Jonathan Demme family Jonathan, Joanne, Ramona and Brooklyn with admiration and affection for ever so many good reasons
BOOK ONE
1950
"There, that's that." Alison Bennett stepped back from the open suitcase on her bed and put her hands on her hips while frowning at it. "I suppose I'm ready. I still think this is sheer madness, though. We'll just be wasting a whole year of our lives."
Her son Clifton, twelve years old, had been packed and ready for half an hour. "A year, Mom?"
Alison's fear showed in the thinning of her lips, which were usually soft. "That's what I agreed to—to try it for twelve months. That's why we're only renting this house, not selling it, thank the good Lord." She transferred her frown to the watch on her wrist, a gift from her husband on her fortieth birthday, a little more than a month ago. "Miss Michelli will be here soon. Are you ready, you two?"
"Yeah, Mom," her son said.
She looked at him. With his back to her now he was standing by a window, gazing out at Gorton Pond. Though everyone who lived on its shores referred to it as a lake and her husband, Lyle, a real estate broker until caught up in this crazy Jamaican thing, insisted it should have been named that because it was more than big enough and "lake" sounded so much better. Anyway, yes, Cliff was ready. Count on that.
They had known for days what each of them would wear this Wednesday morning, and what final odds and ends each would pack for the flight. Her own suitcase was more than half full of schoolbooks she had acquired on a trip to Boston last week, because for the next year she would be tutoring Cliff and his sister on the plantation. Before Lyle had come from England to New England and persuaded her to marry him, she had taught English in Providence.
Well, it was a good thing she was qualified to handle that problem, at least. Where in Jamaica, living at the absolute end of a dirt road in the Blue Mountains, would Cliff and Leora be able to attend anything like an acceptable school?
"Are you ready, Lee?"
"Of course, Mother." Cliff's twin sister, leaning in the bedroom doorway, had always been the rebel in the family. Taller than Cliff, not nearly as girl-pretty as he was boy-handsome, she hadn't used the word "Mom" since she was ten. "Mom" was for mere children. And, of course, she was on her father's side in this dispute about moving to the Caribbean. Like him, she saw it as a grand adventure, a challenge.
Satisfied that all was in readiness, Alison closed her suitcase, then sat on the edge of the bed and studied the children. Lyle and these two, and of course the twins' seventeen-year-old brother Roderick who had graduated from high school only three weeks ago and was now in Jamaica with his father . . . these were her family. Her life. Her whole world. And that beautiful world was about to be all but destroyed, she was certain. Why, oh God, hadn't Lyle's English sister left Glencoe to someone in England? How was a 41-year-old real estate broker to learn enough about coffee farming to restore a neglected plantation in a foreign country?
Now take it easy, Alison, she scolded herself. At least you and the children will be with him this time. Back in '43, when he was drafted and disappeared into the wilds of New Jersey to be an accountant in army ordnance, there were miles of railroad track and army red tape keeping you apart. And come to think of it, he didn't know a thing about ordnance, either, but was commended for his work there, wasn't he?
Hearing the sob that escaped from his mother's lips, Cliff again turned from the window to look at her. He too had been thinking that the move they were about to make would probably end in disaster. But they were not selling this house. That was something. When Dad's crazy Jamaica bubble burst, as it was bound to, they would be able to come back here.
He loved this house on the lake. It stood on almost an acre of land half covered with big oak trees. In summer the swimming was great; in winter there was ice skating. Many a time in winter he'd skated across the lake with a pair of sneakers hung by their laces aro
und his neck, and put the sneakers on when he got to the opposite shore, and walked the short distance to Apponaug. Usually to the library.
There wouldn't be anything like this in Jamaica, Dad had admitted. Just a two-hundred-year-old Great House or whatever they called it, on a run-down coffee estate in the Blue Mountains. Still, the mountains might be fun. Rhode Island didn't have any of those.
Anyhow, there was no way now to stop what was happening. Dad and Roddy had left for Jamaica two weeks ago, to be there when the footlockers arrived, so they could get them through Customs and out to the plantation. Even now Cliff could shut his eyesand see Dad on his knees, downstairs in the game room, painting in white on each of the four footlockers the words GLENCOE, Rainy Ridge, JAMAICA, B.W.I. It was scary. And what about the name Rainy Ridge? Did that mean it would rain all the time there?
Everything they owned had been in those four trunks except, of course, the furniture and the car. Dad had sold the car to Jimmy Sadler's father, up the street, and the furniture had to stay here because the house was being rented furnished. The Great House had its own stuff, anyway. But seeing that word JAMAICA on footlockers filled with clothes and books and everything else that mattered . . . it had seemed somehow like the world was coming to an end.
"I think I hear a car," Mom was saying, and glanced at her birthday watch again. "Miss Michelli's a little early, but I guess we're ready, aren't we?"
"Mother, I've been ready for ages," Lee said in her superior voice.
"My bag's packed," Cliff said. "I'll get it."
He went along the upstairs hall to his room, but before picking up his suitcase, turned for a last look around. Hey, he was twelve years old. This had been his room ever since he was born. He'd been real sick here once and seen crazy things crawling up the walls until they finally found out it was an infection and how to cure it. He loved this room, and now maybe he would never see it again.
This house—he loved all of it. Dad had bought it while Mom was still in the hospital after having Lee and himself: a sort of present for having twins. Dad had been an accountant when he came over from England. He hadn't gone into real estate until a few months before he bought this place on the lake. Sure, he was great in real estate and made lots of money, but did he know anything about growing coffee? Or if you were good at one thing, would you—
The front doorbell chimed. He heard Mom going down the stairs to answer it. This is it, he thought with a quiver of fear. Even if we come back here, I'll be a whole year older.
As she reached out to open the door, Alison, too, suffered a moment of near panic. Somehow nothing had seemed to be quite final until now, even though Lyle and Roddy were already in Jamaica and she couldn't even reach them by phone because the Great House was beyond the end of the phone line. Now as she found herself face to face with the woman from Lyle's real estate office, the attractive, dark-haired AnnaMichelli who had come to drive them to the airport, she knew there could be no turning back. She even stammered as she said, "Good morning, Anna."
"Hi, Mrs. Bennett." Annaspoke without smiling. "Am I too early? I thought with the children you might want to get there a little ahead of time and be checked in before there's a line at the counter."
"Yes. I'd like that." Alison realized she had picked up her handbag on leaving the bedroom. Openingit now, she took out the house keys, all carefully labeled and tied together. She was ever a methodical person. Lyle liked to poke fun at her about it now and then.
She handed the keys to Anna. "You'd better take these now, before I forget."
"All right." Dropping them into her own handbag, Annalooked at Alison and smiled a little now. Only a little, though. Then she reached out to touch Alison on the arm. "Don't worry. It's going to be all right."
"I hope."
"The way he's arranged it, you can come back if it doesn't work out. But think, just think. Almost anyone we know would give an arm or a leg to be going to the Caribbean for a year."
At the top of the stairs Leora was calming asking if it was all right for her and Cliff to bring the luggage down.
"Yes, if you're sure you haven't forgotten anything."
"Oh, Mother." The tone of her voice said it all.
"Well, come on, then."
Down they came, the almost too tall daughter who so resembled Lyle in looks and the obviously apprehensive son who was more like his mother. Lee led the way, struggling with Alison's suitcase as well as her own. Anna Michelli greeted them with a smile and suggested they carry the bags out to her car. "The trunk's open." And to Alison: "Would you like to take a last look around, Mrs. Bennett?"
"Uh-uh. I've been through the whole house at least a dozen times."
"Of course." Because you're that kind of person, Anna thought. And a good thing for Lyle you are. A man who goes chasing after rainbows the way he does needs a wife with both feet on the ground. Drawing the front door shut, she made sure it had locked itself, and then made a mental note to deliver the keys that evening to the people who were renting the house. "Well, now, are we ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose."
Were there tears in Alison's eyes as they walked to the Olds in the driveway? There were, Anna decided. And a noticeable trembling about the lips as she got into the car. The kids had stowed the three pieces of luggage in the trunk and were on the rear seat, as still and silent as though in a church. Anna held the right front door open for Alison, closed it so gently it scarcely clicked, then went around the front and slid in behind the wheel.
Nothing was said as the Olds climbed the hill and rolled through Greenwood to the Post Road. As it purred along the latter toward the airport, Anna Michelli, to break a stillness that was becoming oppressive, said,"You know, I don't believe I know where this Glencoe is, exactly. Where will you be flying to, Kingston or Montego Bay?"
"Kingston."
"And will Mr. Bennett be there to meet you, or—"
"Yes, he'll be there."
"You mean he's bought a car already?"
"He didn't have to. There were two on the plantation."
It wasn't working, Anna decided, and let the silence take over again. She did send occasional glances at the woman beside her, though, and at the mirrored images of the two children inback.
Alison Bennett, she thought. A really nice lady. Yes. Not pretty, exactly, but still in good shape for a woman of—how old had Lyle said she was? Forty last month? Though misty now, those hazel eyes were really lovely, and she didn't have to tint her hair to make it that pretty copper shade. As for the kids, well, Cliff was going to be movie-star good looking when he was older. A knockout. And Leora, though tall for her age, wouldn't do too bad unless she got to be six-foot-three like her father. She had her mother's eyes and hair and a personality that would set anyone apart in a crowd. One thing was 100% certain: nobody was going to make that young lady do anything she didn't want to do. Never in a million years.
2
"Damn it, Roddy, the car won't start!"
From the Great House doorway Lyle Bennett directed a look of near panic—certainly of total frustration—at the 17-year-old youth who sat by the fireplace in the drawing room, studying a map of the Glencoe estate. In a way the look was also a challenge, because son Roderick, a car buff for the past two years, had insisted on taking charge of "restoring"—his word for it—the two cars they had found in the Glencoe garage on their arrival.
The rain had stopped an hour ago and the big double front doors stood wide now to let in a glare of afternoon sunlight that made of Lyle a tall, rangy silhouette with untrimmed hair and slightly protruding ears. With, somehow, an aura glowing around him, like a golden extension of himself as he said with a groan, "How are we to get to the airport?"
His son's handsome face took on some new lines as he rose smoothly to his feet. "Must be the all-night rain, Dad. I'll check it out."
Lyle looked helplessly at his watch, aware that he had been criminally negligent in not making sure of the car much earlier
. Neither of Glencoe's machines had run when they first arrived, both having been idle for months. But Roddy had driven down to Morant Bay in the one they had rented when they first arrived in Jamaica, and with an oil-change and a new battery the Austin Cambridge, at least, had seemed to be in good working order. The other, an English Ford station wagon, was now in a Seaforth repair shop, having a radiator leak soldered.
So, then, the Austin had to run or how would he and Roddy get to Kingston to pick up Alison and the kids at the airport? The rental had been returned days ago; there was no phone in the house; the only car he might borrow belonged to Desmond Reid, manager of the adjoining Osburn Hall estate, in Kingston today attending some sort of meeting at the Coffee Industry Board.
Dear God, what to do?
"Come in and sit down, Dad," Roddy advised. "Have a drink or something while I—"
"It won't start, I tell you."
"Okay. But sometimes after a hard rain . . . Anyway, let me seewhat I can do." Roddy went past his father onto the Great House veranda, where he paused at the wooden railing to look down at the machine they had been talking about. It was not in the old fieldstone carriage house used as a garage now but in front of that, in the open. He had moved it out yesterday afternoon when trying to rearrange some of the stuff stored in the garage. Obviously he should have run it back in. Stupid of me, he thought, shaking his head as he descended to the yard. But the summer months were supposed to be dry here, weren't they?
GlencoeGreat House had been built into the side of a hill down which its driveway plunged in a wide curve. From the yard a steep flight of wooden steps led to what amounted to a second-floor front veranda off which handsome double doors opened into the living quarters. The kitchen, pantry, laundry room and what must have been storerooms at one time were all below, reached through various doors at yard level. Mom was not going to be happy about that, Roddy had been telling himself. Especially if she insisted on doing some of the cooking herself, as she probably would. The downstairs part of the house was of stone, and those lower rooms we like a cellar. Besides, the inside stairs up to the drawing room, dining room and bedrooms were even steeper than those outside.
