The Phantom

by Rob MacGregor

  “Breen? Styles?”

  “Hate to bet my life on it, Quill,” Breen said.

  “Same here,” Styles agreed.

  Quill considered their situation for a few moments; his eyes were on the bridge, not the chasm. He was pretty sure he could make it across, but he didn’t want to chance it with the truck.

  “Okay. We’ll go over on foot. All except one. He’ll stay back to drive the truck across.”

  They all looked at one another and edged away from the bridge. “Yeah. Good idea, Quill. But which one?” Morgan asked.

  Quill turned to see Zak standing in front of the truck. He smiled at the kid. “Hey, you want to learn to drive a truck?”

  “You’re kidding, I hope,” Morgan said.

  “Not unless you’d like to take his place.”

  When Zak slid behind the wheel, he could barely see over the dashboard. In order for his feet to reach the pedals, he had to sit on the very edge of the seat. His mouth was dry, his head ached. He was concentrating, doing what they’d told him. He knew this bridge well. He’d crossed it many times. He’d seen carts pulled by horses, but he’d never seen a truck cross over it. The bridge was old, but he thought it was strong enough to support the truck as long as he stayed on the wood planks. That was the problem. He just didn’t know if he could drive it in a straight line.

  He had to do it, though. He wasn’t doing it for these men. No, it was for his father. These men were bad and his father needed his help. Zak would do whatever he could to free him.

  The man named Quill had heard that his father knew this part of the jungle better than anyone, so one day when Zak and his father were in Zavia buying supplies, Quill asked his father to be his guide. His father agreed when he heard how much Quill was going to pay him, but he changed his mind when he found out what Quill and the other men were looking for.

  That was when they took him to a ship in a cove and tied him up. They were going to torture him in front of Zak, but then Zak told the men he knew the jungle, too, and he would help them if they let his father go. Quill promised they would free his father as soon as Zak showed them the way to the ancient place.

  That was the last time he had seen his father. As he’d left the ship, Zak had found his father’s red and blue kerchief on the dock. He’d picked it up and still carried it with him, a reminder that his father’s freedom was the only thing that mattered.

  The engine was already running. He stretched forward, pushing the clutch pedal as close as he could to the floor without slipping off the seat. Then he pulled the shift stick toward him. The engine sputtered. The gears were grinding, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to make them work.

  He followed the directions the men had given him as closely as he could. He let the clutch out slowly and stepped on the gas pedal. But the engine coughed, the truck shuddered, and then it stalled. He hadn’t pushed down hard enough.

  They told him that might happen. So he started over again. This time he stepped harder on the gas pedal as he let out the clutch. The truck jerked ahead, bounced onto the bridge, and Zak’s breath died in his throat.

  The truck rolled forward. He knew that if he drove off the planks, the bridge might sway, the ropes might break, and the truck could easily tumble over the side. He concentrated on steering, but the truck was picking up speed as it descended to the center of the bridge. He turned the wheel from side to side and somehow stayed on the planks.

  Then, as the truck started ascending toward the other side, it went slower, slower. He rocked his body forward and back in the seat, as if the motion would force the truck to go faster. Almost there. Not much further. But the truck was barely moving now.

  The four men on the other side urged him on, motioning wildly with their hands. “I knew that bridge was safe!” yelled the one called Styles. “He’s going to make it. Step on it, kid!”

  Then, from Quill: “C’mon, kid!” He grinned like a monkey, gestured, grinned some more. “Nice and easy now. Almost there.”

  Quill was the meanest one of the bunch. Zak wanted to run the truck right into him. But he had to think of his father.

  Then Zak’s foot slipped off the gas pedal. When he tried to reach it, the wheel spun to the left, then the right. He steadied it, but the engine sputtered, then died.

  “Turn it over, kid. Turn it over!” Quill yelled, no longer grinning.

  Zak didn’t understand. What was he saying, turn the truck over? That’s what he was trying not to do.

  “Start it again,” Morgan shouted in his terrible attempt to speak Bangalla, the common language used by all the tribes to communicate. “Start it again.”

  Zak understood him the second time. He turned the key. The truck jerked forward, but didn’t start.

  “The clutch,” one of the men yelled. “Step on the clutch!”

  He pressed down with his left foot and cranked the engine again. It roared to life and he stepped down as hard as he could on the gas pedal. The truck lurched ahead onto solid ground, and the men leaped aside.

  “The brake, the brake!” Quill yelled.

  Zak was confused, then remembered the other pedal. He slid forward and slammed both feet onto the brake. The truck jerked to a stop. Still in gear, it sputtered, backfired, and stalled. He collapsed against the steering wheel.

  The driver’s door swung open, and Quill roughly pulled him out. “Look,” he said, stabbing his finger in the direction of the pedals. “Brake pedal, clutch pedal. Brake pedal, clutch pedal. Got it?”

  Zak felt like spitting in his face. I’m the one who drove across it, he thought. I earned my father’s freedom. But he was too afraid of Quill to say anything. He didn’t like the skull tattooed on his cheek or the spider web tattooed on his forearm. That, more than anything, sent bright, sharp stabs of fear through Zak.

  “Ah, I’m wasting my time,” Quill said with a look of disgust. He jumped in the driver’s seat, put the truck in gear, and accelerated away from the bridge as the other men chased after it.

  Zak just stood there and stared after the truck, relieved that he’d made it, but confused by the vision that unfolded in his mind’s eye. He saw the ropes breaking, saw the truck plummeting into the ravine. Then he understood what it meant: the truck wasn’t going to make it across the bridge on the return trip.

  FIVE

  The lush tangled forest was closing in on them with every mile they traveled. Quill imagined that if he stopped, he would actually see the vines and branches growing and slowly reaching out toward the truck. If they stayed in one place for long, the vehicle and all of its occupants would be completely strangled, victims of the cursed Bangalla jungle.

  Quill slowed to a stop. The twin ruts disappeared just ahead of the truck, swallowed by a mass of green growth. A forbidding, impenetrable wall of jungle foliage blocked their way.

  “End of the road, fellows,” Quill said, stepping out of the truck. Their only choice was to burrow ahead. “We go on foot from here. Get the machetes out.” He unfolded the map. “Zak! Take a look. Which way?”

  The kid glanced at the map, then the jungle. He stepped back, shook his head, and mumbled something that was barely audible.

  “What now?” Quill turned to Morgan for an explanation. “What’s his problem?”

  Morgan leaned over and exchanged a few words with Zak. Straightening up, he frowned. “Says we can’t go on. These woods are protected.”

  “Oh, yeah? By who?” Quill asked.

  Morgan listened to Zak; his frown deepened to a deep furrow between his eyes. “He says . . . a ghost.”

  Breen snorted. “A what?”

  “The Ghost Who Walks,” Morgan said. “That’s who he’s talking about.”

  Quill’s hand tapped the skull tattoo on his face. “See that kid? Betcha don’t know what it means, do you? No, of course not. You only know about superstitions. It means we don’t have to worry about any Ghost Who Walks. You can be sure of that.”

  “Well, the little bugger says h
e won’t take us beyond this point,” Morgan said.

  “Shoot him,” Styles said.

  “No, we may need him.” Quill smiled. “To drive the truck back across the bridge. Tie him up and toss him into the back of the truck.” He glanced down at the map and tapped it with his index finger. “We can find our own way from here.”

  It was late afternoon when Quill and his companions arrived at the face of a cliff deep in the jungle. It was right where the map had said it would be, a mile east of a pond that had taken them hours to find.

  The jungle steamed, the insects were horrendous man-eaters, but the snakes were the worst. They’d killed one for every hundred yards they’d traveled. They were lucky they hadn’t all been poisoned or squeezed to death by the deadly serpents.

  They had been taking a break when Quill had spotted something glistening through the foliage. The pond. From there they had followed the compass readings and headed directly east. They’d climbed and crawled and scrambled through the jungle, hacking their way through the underbrush as best they could to maintain a straight path through the thicket, until finally the cliff was visible.

  Now that they were there, they had to find the cave, and so far there was no sign of it.

  The jungle guarded its secrets like a jealous lover, thought Quill. He slashed his machete at the underbrush, working his way along the base of the cliff. This must be the right cliff, he kept telling himself. He’d covered about twenty feet when he came to a narrow opening in a rock. Suddenly filled with new energy, he chopped vigorously at the vines growing over the opening and pulled them away with his hands.

  The mouth of the cave was actually no more than a crack in the cliff. If he hadn’t known there was a cave, he would never have found the opening. He still wasn’t sure this was the right place. He stuck his head through the opening and yelled. His voice echoed, a strange hollow sound that bounced off walls deep inside the cliff. The cave, for sure.

  “Over here!” he shouted. He didn’t know if the others heard him; they were chopping along other parts of the cliff. “Hurry up. We haven’t got all day.”

  Instead of waiting for the others, Quill squeezed through the crack. The dampness suffused his senses; he blinked hard against the darkness and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light that filtered in through the opening.

  He had the odd feeling that he was being observed. He turned on his flashlight; the beam bounced off the wall across from him. Shadows eddied across it, and for a moment he thought one shadow seemed longer than the others, denser. It spooked him. He blinked and it was gone.

  He listened, but didn’t hear any sounds from within the cave. Too much jungle, he thought. The blasted jungle was playing tricks on his head, messing with his eyes.

  As the others joined him, they turned on their flashlights. Quill had barely gone fifteen feet into the cave when he froze in place. His beam of light played on a blackened, shriveled corpse that was leaning against the wall. Its lips had long ago disappeared; it looked like a grotesque, grinning demon.

  He turned and there was another and another. Everywhere they looked they saw decomposing, semi-mummified corpses propped up in niches and alcoves that had been cut in the wall.

  “It’s a crypt,” Quill whispered.

  “Uncle Leo!” Breen said, aiming his light at a withered corpse. A thick, hairy spider had woven a web between the remains of the face and the shoulders. When the light struck the web, the creature darted inside an eye socket.

  “Knock it off!” snapped Morgan.

  Quill didn’t like it. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being observed. Softly he said, “Keep your eyes open.”

  Styles didn’t like this cave; not a bit. He wished he had waited outside. He could’ve said he’d guard the entrance. But now it was too late. If he said anything, Quill would accuse him of being afraid of the dark. He’d never let up on him.

  Styles squatted down in front of the corpse and scratched his scruffy goatee. He leaned forward and scrutinized the silver armbands. Some sort of jewels were imbedded in the silver. “You look like an important fella. Let me see what you left behind.”

  Cautiously he reached out and rubbed one of the stones on an armband. It looked like a pearl, he thought. He was about to see if he could slip the armbands off when he noticed several baskets partially covered with rotting fabric near the corpses’ feet. He opened one and saw that it was filled with precious stones. So was the next one and the one after that. He could hardly contain himself. He’d struck it rich.

  He was about to call the others over when he saw something wrapped in a cloth behind the baskets. He leaned forward and scooped up the oval object. The cloth nearly disintegrated in his hands, and he was left holding a soiled and discolored skull.

  But from the weight of it, he knew it was no ordinary skull. He buffed the crown with the sleeve of his shirt and a silvery sheen glimmered in the flashlight’s beam. “Hey, Quill! Over here!”

  “Whadya find?”

  He held up the skull and grinned, and the jeweled eyes glowed as if with a light of their own. “I think you’re going to like this. I got it.”

  “Good work, Styles!” He cupped the skull in his palms and studied it. “Well, well. Mr. Drax is gonna be very happy.”

  Styles was wondering about his bonus, and what they were going to do with all the jewels and old stuff that looked like it was made of gold and silver. If he became rich, the first thing he intended to do was to get out of this jungle and go back to the States. But he needed some cover or the cops would be all over him. They’d been after him for years.

  “Hey, Quill, I was just wondering, what’s so important about that thing, anyway?”

  Quill was silent a moment. “I dunno. I don’t like to ask Drax too many questions.” He lowered the skull. “His answers scare me.”

  “So how did you get connected with him? I’m thinking that maybe I could go to work for him, too.”

  “Yeah, maybe. You know I used to be with the Zephro gang back in the old days, and when I snuck back to see about getting on with them again, the boss told me to go see Drax. Said he was the one to get hooked up with now.”

  “So what did you tell Drax that made him hire you?” Styles asked, his curiosity growing.

  “A bunch of stuff, but when I told him about the Brotherhood, he got real interested and put me to work. I thought he liked the reference, but the next thing I know he sends me right back here with that map.”

  “I’ve got another surprise for you.” He smiled broadly as he opened the top of one of the baskets and Quill directed a beam of light into it.

  Quill made an animal sound. “All right! Styles, why didn’t ya say something? Are all the baskets—”

  “Yup. You got it. They’re all stuffed with jewels. We’re rich, Quill. Really rich. So maybe you can put a word in for me with Drax, see, because I need the protection.”

  “Yeah, I think I could . . .”

  What the . . . ! A pair of cold hands clasped Styles by the neck and squeezed hard. At first he thought it was Breen or Morgan trying to scare him. But when he reached up to pull off the hands, he grabbed bony arms and bony fingers. He jerked wildly at the arms, gagging, gasping for air. But the corpse had him.

  Quill took a step back, stunned by the animated corpse. He hesitated, then dropped the skull and tried to pry off the fingers, but they tightened around Styles’s neck. He pulled out his gun and fired several times into the corpse. It didn’t do any good.

  Styles’s struggling was futile. His life was slipping away, and his past unreeled in the shadows dancing on the cave walls. He saw himself as an altar boy in Philadelphia, getting caught stealing candy from a store, breaking into houses as a teenager, going to war, coming home, and killing a bank teller and two cops in a robbery. He’d been on the run when he’d met Morgan and Breen, who were also in big trouble. Then Quill came along and promised them all a good life in a faraway paradise working for the Sengh Brotherhoo
d, whoever they were.

  Some paradise. Apes and insects, snakes and crocodiles, even lions. The jungle was more dangerous than death row. And he still didn’t know anything about the Sengh Brotherhood, except that the jungle held their deadly secrets. That thought hung in front of him like a solid thing, then it faded and Styles didn’t think anymore about anything.

  Morgan and Breen rushed over at the sound of gunfire, but there was nothing they could do. The corpse released Styles and he slumped forward.

  “He’s dead,” Quill said flatly, and scooped up the silver skull. He turned it over and over again in his hands, and rubbed his fingers over it, checking it for nicks, chips, damage. But it seemed to be okay.

  He clutched it to his chest and backed away from the grotesque corpse.

  “What happened?” Morgan hissed.

  “The corpse came alive! Choked him to death.” Quill kept an eye on the corpse as he spoke.

  “That’s not possible,” Morgan replied, his voice betraying the uncertainty he felt—the fear.

  “Tell Styles.”

  “C’mon,” Morgan said softly, his voice quavering now. “Let’s get out of here and fast.”

  “Look at the jewels!” Breen said. One of the baskets had fallen over and jewels had spilled out onto the floor of the cave. “There’s a lot of valuable junk in here.”

  Quill just wanted to get out. He wasn’t taking any chances. He stuffed the silver skull into his leather pouch. “Take it. Go ahead. Take it all! Nobody’s gonna miss it.”

  Morgan’s greed overcame his fear. He tugged on his battered Panama hat and joined Breen in looting the crypt, filling burlap sacks with booty.

  Quill moved toward the entrance of the cave. He was so concerned with avoiding the corpses that he walked into a spider web. He swatted at it, peeling the sticky stuff away from his face. His heart pounded in tandem with the sound of distant drumming that was seeping into the cave.

  Morgan’s head snapped up. “What’s that noise?”