by Dan Newman
At the oven, Vincent began working the copra with a long steel rake, and the boys instinctively kept a watch on the bush-line around them. They didn’t talk, but instead cut nervous glances at the forest, searching intently for dark foreboding shapes. They bit nervously at lips and nails, impatiently willing time on so they could scurry back to the sanctity of the bedroom. As Nate looked around, he saw the black sky was softening. The dawn was coming on, and before long the coconut trees would frame another perfectly blue Caribbean sky. That would be good, he thought, and perhaps there might be a way to convince the others to go home early. One night at Ti Fenwe was enough. He missed home, he missed his mom and dad, and he didn’t want another night of unseen creatures running around above him and animals having their throats torn out in the woods.
But when Nate looked back down, the thoughts all evaporated. Vincent was standing beside him, deadly still, with the pistol held out in front of him in the firing position. He was facing the bush-line. He looked left to see where the others were and the motion made Vincent speak. “Don’t move, Nate my boy. Don’t move a bloody muscle.”
“What is it?” whispered Nate, suddenly more scared than he had been all night. Behind him he could hear Pip begin to whimper, and a flash of anger sparkled through him for an instant and then was gone.
“It’s that little bastard again,” said Vincent. His tone mostly conveyed a sense of wonder—a kind of grudging respect for a wily opponent—but there was an edge of fear in there, too. It was that sharp little edge that had Nate worried. “He’s right there. Right next to the mango tree.” Vincent stepped a little closer to Nate to open the angle and presumably expose more of his target. “That’s it,” he whispered. “I’ve got you now bata, you little bastard.”
In one fluid motion, Vincent pulled the hammer back to fire.
Beside him, Nate was watching the drama unfold with increasing horror. He couldn’t see anything near the tree—hell, he couldn’t be sure he was even looking at the right damn tree. In the space of a fractured second Nate’s mind ran through a quick checklist of the night’s eventualities. There was the brutal business of Vincent doing God knew what to Tristan, there was the goat, torn apart from chin to chest, the scuffle at Augustine’s, the dead chicken, plucked and left in the attic, and there was the thing itself, the Bolom, running through the house. It was all enough already. Enough scares, enough cruelty, enough everything. Whatever—or whoever—was hiding by the tree was about to get shot and something in Nate had had its fill.
Without thinking Nate yelled, No!, then flicked out his hand and swatted down on Vincent’s wrist just as the gun discharged. It let out a pop like a champagne cork, and the dirt a few feet from where they stood spat up from the ground.
A second later, something in the bush-line moved. There was a rustling sound, and Nate swore he saw something—perhaps just a branch or a bundle of leaves shifting—but something, and right beside the mango tree, too. He looked up at Vincent and saw the man was furious. The gravity of what he had just done settled quickly on Nate, and he looked to the others for a way out, a helping hand, anything. Their faces were blank, unbelieving. All except Tristan’s. The heir to the estate was smiling a cruel smile.
Nate looked back at Vincent who was now struggling to contain himself and fidgeting with the gun in his hands. Finally he looked directly at Nate and spoke aloud to the whole group. “All of you. Back to the room,” he said coolly. “Now.”
25
To Nate, it sounded like someone shushing in a movie theatre, only in a more regular, consistent fashion. One followed the next, then a pause about the length of a breath, and then it would repeat. He listened for a moment longer and thought about opening his eyes. His lids felt impossibly heavy, as if his lashes had been dipped in lead while he slept. He also felt uncomfortable, as if he had been somehow sleeping in an awkward position, thrust up against the headboard with the pillows and blankets wrapped and heaped about him.
But when he did finally open his eyes, he found that he was not in his bed at all, but crammed tightly into the foot-well of the front seat of a car. On his chest he could feel the seat belt, but it held no real tension, and as he followed the blue fabric strap, he could see that it had ripped itself clear of the anchor point below the seat. He twisted up and backwards, and couldn’t understand why he was pitched forward so. His feet and knees were in the foot-well and his arm was resting on the part of the dash normally facing the passenger. Finally his head cleared, and he understood that the car was somehow sitting vertically, nose down, surrounded by a world of green.
And there was that sound again, the shushing, regular and off to his right. In the driver’s seat beside him sat Smiley. He was still in his seat, belt cinched in place, but because the car was standing on its front end his arms were hanging forward and down through the frame of the now glassless front windshield. As Nate’s faculties fully returned, he realized that the car was suspended nose-down in a tree, and around them was an impossibly dense tangle of vegetation of every type. The car rocked gently as he moved, and one look down through the front windshield showed him they were stopped hard in the ‘Y’ of a sizeable, dark wooded tree. The car was suspended in place by a web of thick vines the size of climbing ropes massed together in every direction. The car was a crumpled wreck of blue, and steam gently rose from somewhere down at the front.
Smiley was struggling to breathe, and in considerable pain. Nate pulled himself from the foot-well, and was relieved to find that all of his parts were working. He was bruised for certain, but no breaks, no gaping wounds. Smiley, he saw, was less lucky. Nate pushed himself up and straddled the dash, sitting on it with one foot inside and the other hanging out over the hood of the car.
The tree that had caught their vehicle and saved them from tumbling into the valley had done so at a price. A broken branch, about the size of a baseball bat, had come through the opening where the windshield had once sat, and was now jammed firmly into Smiley’s shoulder, pinning him to the seat. A red stain spread from the spot and worked its way down the branch. Nate stared for a moment in horror. Had the branch gone through Smiley? Or was it broken off and simply pressed firmly against him. Smiley wheezed again, the shushing sound, and he became aware of Nate looking on.
“Nate,” he said weakly. “Help me.”
The voice broke Nate from his stupor. “Don’t move. Don’t move. Let me see.” He stood almost upright in the wheel-well, and peered into the back seat. If the branch had gone through the man he was not sure what he would do, and he found himself wondering what he would say to Smiley. Gee, it appears you’ve been run through by this here tree. You’ll probably bleed to death if I pull you off it.
Smiley wheezed again. “What is it? Tell me!” he said insistently.
“It’s okay—it’s not through you. I think you’re just wedged in.” He looked at the angle of the seat-back, and could see that the left side—the side where Smiley was pinned tight—was twisted back by the force of the branch.
Nate looked around for a solution, then again at Smiley’s predicament. “Okay, I think I can get you out. Can you reach down beside you? Between the seat and the door—there should be a seat-back adjustment.” Nate looked at the assembly on his own seat. Yes, there was a simple lever there. One pull should free the seat and allow it to move to a new angle. “You should be able to feel a lever. Go ahead and pull that and it should let the seat-back go free. It should release the pressure on your shoulder.”
Nate listened as Smiley grunted in pain, fumbling blindly for the lever beside his seat. He wondered if releasing the pressure would cause more pain, or if there would be some new bleeding he should prepare for. Or—God help them—if the whole car was being held from shifting by that one branch wedged against Smiley. And as he thought it, Smiley pulled the lever.
The seat-back released like a gallows trap door and snapped Smiley backward and into a near standing position. The car shifted violently, dropped another foot, and
the branch that held him rode up and over his shoulder. Nate threw out his hands and braced himself for the fall, but with a jerk hard enough to wind him, the car groaned and wedged tightly into its new spot.
“You okay?” he asked Smiley.
The big man blinked and looked around before he answered. “Better,” he said finally, and Nate could hear him drawing lungfuls of air. The shushing has ceased.
“Are you bleeding?”
Smiley looked down and under his shirt. “Some. But nah too bad.”
The two men looked at each other and after a moment the relief at being alive showed on their faces.
“Honestly,” said Nate. “This might be my worst vacation ever.”
Smiley laughed, and then coughed, and then laughed some more.
They found Smiley’s cell phone sitting in pieces near the accelerator, and decided climbing down seemed a better option than trying to scramble up through the trees. It took the two men nearly an hour to sufficiently bind Smiley’s wound, then extricate themselves from the car and the tree. They worked their way through the mass of green and finally reached a road lower down the slope. When they emerged they were just yards from a small collection of houses.
Smiley knocked on the door and asked to use the phone, and Nate sat heavily on a pile of building stone by the roadside. A boy came out of the house with lime juice for him and a green towel soaked in warm water. Nate smiled, drank deeply, and wiped the grime from his face. With the adrenaline rush over, he was beginning to feel as he did before the accident—feverish, weak, and tired. All he wanted was a warm bed and some sleep. Maybe a handful of antibiotics to get things back on track.
Smiley dispatched the boy into the bush and he returned twenty minutes later with Nate’s small case, as well as a small backpack that belonged to Smiley. He paid the boy with a handful of change, which sent him squealing away in delight.
Smiley sat beside Nate on the building stone and watched the boy skip away. “You remember when life was dat simple, man? When you get a few shillings in your hand and dat’s all it take to be happy?”
Nate wiped his face again with the towel. “Ah,” Smiley said, lifting himself awkwardly from the stone pile and cupping his hand over his shoulder. He flicked his chin out in the direction of the road. “Here we go.”
A liquid-silver Seven Series BMW floated gently to a halt in front of them, and the sun glinted off the chrome with an intensity that forced both men to shield their eyes.
She was dressed in khaki shorts, a simple white T-shirt and flip-flops, each adorned with a single bejewelled starfish.
Nate had never seen Rachael look so lovely.
26
Morning, with its brilliant sunshine, had the power to dissolve all manner of horrors. The incident of the night before was swept away, not spoken of or addressed in any way. But Nate knew this visit would likely be his last. Still, the prospect of the day ahead was so bright, so light and filled with promise that thoughts of unseen creatures in bushes, pistols and offended grown-ups were easily cast away.
The boys ate quickly, before Vincent woke, stuffing their faces with bowls of Muesli flooded with warm Carnation Evaporated Milk straight from the tin. They skipped through the main hall, now bright and airy with fuzzy shafts of sunlight streaming in through unshuttered windows. It held no sense of malice, no bleak pall. It was just a large, empty room. Only the stairwell entrance to the attic seemed at all unsettling, and even that was a minor condition. Still, the boys all gave it a wide berth just the same.
The track leading from the house was bathed in warm light, that unique daybreak radiance—lasting only an hour or so—that is somehow buoyant and touches everything with gold. It had a hopeful quality to it that wrapped around all of them. Even Tristan was affected.
“What do you guys want to do?” he said in a tone close to enthusiasm.
“Explore…” suggested Pip.
“Yeah,” said Nate. “Or maybe we could go back to that place, you know, and shoot more ball bearings?”
“Yeah, lets!” Richard chimed in.
The boys ran wildly through the forest, ducking through natural corridors of cascading lianas, over fallen trees wrapped jealously with vines and creepers, and down winding paths still damp and slick with morning dew. They ran through curtains of tumbling leafy thickets, whipping the branches behind them across the path to swat the next kid in line, laughing, finding sticks, throwing stones, being eleven, twelve, and thirteen.
At the clearing, Tristan went straight to the box on the old industrial-wire spool that served as the main table, and retrieved the two Wrist Rockets. Nate smiled at the sight of them, and couldn’t wait to send a ball bearing crashing through the polystyrene blocks. He looked up at the natural cathedral above him, scooped out as it was like a secret dome within the forest. It seemed almost sacrilegious to have all this discarded furniture dragged into its midst.
“Okay—ten-minute ball bearing search,” cried Tristan. “Whoever finds most gets first try!”
The boys sprinted as a herd toward one end of the clearing, the target end, where the ground was dusted with tiny white beads from all the polystyrene blocks that had been destroyed over the years. They plunged through the green wall, crying out like warriors into battle, and scattered among the trees and bushes on hands and knees.
Ten minutes later and Nate was the clear winner. At the edge of the clearing, Richard set a few well beaten blocks of Styrofoam in the tree branches and retreated to safety beside the group.
Nate drew the yellow elastics back as far as his arm span would allow. He could feel the power humming in the rubber, and the tension in the slingshot pressing into his forearm through the wrist-brace. It was dizzying, intoxicating stuff, and he held onto the moment, stretching it out for as long as his muscles would hold. Finally, with a burning in his forearm, the moment had come to let fly.
Thwack! The silver bearing hurtled forward, struck the white block cleanly and punched a perfect hole straight through it. A small shower of white polystyrene beads floated down from behind it, and the boys collectively let out a cheer.
Nate smiled. It seemed this was something he was good at. Really good at. He was thrilled. Elated. Cracking that bearing through the white block on his first shot was like cocking a leg and marking his turf. He’d never felt so connected. He looked around and saw that the others recognized it too; his status had just ratcheted upward with an almost audible click. Richard stepped up to him and smiled with one hand splayed out wide. “Nice!” he said, but before the moment had fully unfolded Tristan shoved him hard out of the way. Richard caught his foot on the edge of the wooden spool table and went down hard.
Nate shook his head lightly. “Come on, Tristan…”
But the blonde boy smiled resiliently as he picked himself up. It’s okay, It’s okay, he mumbled.
Tristan had already lined up a shot with his own slingshot, and when he let the leather pouch go it sent the ball bearing hissing past the target and pit-pat-pitting through the leaves at the clearing’s edge. No one said a thing.
The game continued, and when at last they’d had their fill it was Nate they had to convince to move on. “Just a few more shots,” he pleaded. “Just these four that I have left.”
Finally the Wrist Rockets were tucked back into the box on top of the spool. The boys went back to the Estate house, ate crudely made peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and then tore back down the trail, past the clearing and deeper into the forest. They followed Tristan, who was moving fast—trying to lose them, it felt like—but they managed to keep up for the most part. Only once they lost sight of him, but Richard knew the way and a few minutes later they emerged at the bank of a small river carving its way through the rainforest in search of the sea.
The bank pitched steeply to water’s edge where the river moved like a lazy serpent through the trees. The water was cold and clear, and the bottom was gravel and coarse sand, dotted with patches of smooth and mossy bedrock. Trist
an was splashing through it in moments, wading out to the middle where he stood in water up to his thighs. The others watched from the safety of the bank until Tristan raised his arms and goaded them. “Poul!” he chided them. Chickens!
And that was all it took. The other three charged headlong into the river, whooping and hollering like newly freed lunatics. The water was mountain pure and clear as a lens. Soon the boys were reaching down to the bottom, bringing up stones and waterlogged branches, and calling each other over to show off their finds.
And it was Tristan who started it. He dug a handful of coarse sand from the bottom and plopped it on Nate’s back as he was talking to Richard. It was cold and slithery, and when Nate shrieked in surprise they all laughed. It grew quickly, and soon the boys had each claimed a spot in the river and were reaching down to the bottom in waist-deep water, retrieving handfuls of river sand and hurling it at each other. It would break up in the air and shower them with stinging pellets, and they would turn and cower, taking the sand on their backs, and then howl in protest. Countless handfuls were raised and thrown, complete with sound effects from bullets to bombs, and cries of anguished Hollywood deaths to boot.
Eventually Pip got something in his eye, a fleck of coarse gravel, and he retreated to the bank with Tristan still flinging handfuls of wet sand his way. Stop it! Stop it! he yelled, but Tristan was gripped by the moment. Like a jackal toying with its prey, he continued to pepper Pip as the boy made his way to the river’s edge. Nate followed to see if he was all right and also got hit, while on the furthest edge of the river Richard stood waiting in the water, a handful of sand at the ready.
