Cave of Bones (Dark Island Series Book 2)

by J. D. Matheny

  Bolo grabbed up his fishing pole and started reeling in line, all the while his eyes gazed suspiciously at the shore of the place where he was told ever since he was a boy never to venture near. Those stories meant to scare children were now creeping back into the head of the man. A God with a head of fire, big and powerful, with no face and who liked to seduce women.

  Good thing I’m no woman, he thought. Then he laughed and shook his head at his moment of weakness. The shore was only a couple of hundred yards off now, maybe he should go walk there for a moment, just to prove he wasn’t scared.

  Right then, his line snagged something heavy and he snapped his eyes back down to the task he was at. The normally clear water was darkened now by the lack of light. He kept reeling in and lifting the pole. It didn’t feel like he’d snagged a fish, it was more of a dead weight. Maybe it was garbage, some plastic perhaps. It wouldn’t be the first time Bolo had reeled in a hunk of the stuff.

  The line was coming in more slowly now and sweat began to bead up on his forehead with the effort it was taking him. He peered down into the water hoping for a glimpse of what could be weighing down the line to such a degree. Then the craziest thing happened. Deep down where his line entered the water a point of light shone. At first, he thought it must be a trick of the dying day but gradually it grew bigger and bigger. It was then he realized it wasn’t a reflection of any kind, it was under the water.

  Something was rising from below him.

  Bolo grabbed for his knife, and in his hurry, fumbled it and watched it bounce off his bench and into the water pooled in the bottom of his boat. He bent over and grabbed at the knife again, getting it firmly in hand this time, and sat up to cut the line. He no longer cared for any loss of gear, he cared only for getting away from this place as quickly as possible. How foolish he felt now! His friends often laughed at the elders when they spoke of the old ways, and admittedly, he did as well, but he wasn’t laughing now. As he cut the line and threw the pole in the boat he saw the glow was now several feet around and approaching the surface quickly. Reaching back, he grabbed hold of the handle to pull start the boat’s engine to life. Yanking frantically, his arm working like a piston, he began cursing. The engine wouldn’t start. Suddenly the boat lurched wildly, nearly dumping him out, and he grabbed at the sides to keep from falling into the water.

  Looking now back over the side he realized the light was gone. Everything looked again as it should. Bolo let out a long sigh and shook the panic from his head. Just as he was about to fire up the engine and flee this horrible place he felt a heat behind him. It caused him to pause, for this wasn’t the heat of a tropical breeze, it was a focused heat, as if somebody had built a fire at his back. His skin broke out in goose bumps and he slowly turned his head back toward the front of the boat.

  Sitting quietly, only three feet away from him, was a creature straight out of the old stories he’d heard as a child. A man, dark and enormous of stature, with licks of flame dancing around on the top of his head. Bolo would have guessed this thing was staring at him, only there were no eyes, indeed no face! Only a dark, swirling vortex which seemed to be bottomless. Bolo stared down into the twisting blackness, losing all sense of fear. He saw things down in that endless pit but couldn’t make them out. Staring hard, all senses left him but for his morbid curiosity to know what they were. He felt hands grip the sides of his head as the vortex grew closer. Yes! he thought, closer, I need to see!

  And he did see. He saw himself and he saw his beautiful wife Sala, cradling the mound of their unborn child. Then he saw what he needed to do. The fish no longer mattered, fatherhood no longer mattered, what mattered was his task. The important mission his God had given him.

  Bolo heard the boats engine start and felt himself coming up out of the bottomless pit. The waning light made itself known to him again as the hands disappeared from the sides of his head and the warmth came back to ease his eerie chill. The figure was gone.

  He looked back upon the sun and realized he would never make it back before dark, but it didn’t seem to matter to him anymore. The dark was nothing he needed to fear now. He had seen down into the depths of it and returned. What he found was he wanted to go back, but he had something to do first.

  Bolo turned the boat toward his old home and gunned the engine.

  6

  Thomas walked off the plane after an eleven-hour flight feeling like his legs had three extra joints in them and all of them were filled with sand. Normally, on such a long flight, he would have sprung for business class just for the extra leg room. Being well over six feet tall had several disadvantages, but booking on such short notice left him only Coach seats for options.

  The airport was familiar, having been here less than a year ago. It was small and simple like many tropical airports. The weather hit him harder than it had the last time. January is the Summer season in Fiji, which meant hotter weather and more humidity. He could feel the humidity now like it was a wet blanket being draped over his skin. Sweat was already beading up all over his upper body and trickles of it were tickling their way down his back. Looking over at Sophie he saw she was looking a bit shell-shocked.

  “Sophie? You doing okay?”

  “Mhmm,” was her only response.

  The trip with her was a challenging one and he would have expected no less, given the circumstances. Her moods would jump around without warning, going from frantic to disbelieving. She would fret constantly about how long it was taking for them to reach their destination but then, in between fretting, would ask Thomas if he thought she was losing her mind. None of this could be real, she would tell him. He was concerned, wondering whether she had truly cracked or whether it was just her way of coping with the events. For his part, he had chosen to believe her, as best he could. That was the safest route to sanity.

  The parallel between her now and what she spoke about Jacob before were not lost on him. Jacob seemed to have gone through the same process of questioning reality after he had killed Chris. He hoped desperately his sister wouldn’t start seeing dark shadow spirits and evil demons. How would he react? Then again, he supposed that was the whole reason for coming. He was still having a tough time with the idea. Maybe his mind appeared just as fractured to Sophie as hers was appearing to him. It felt as if reality were a pool he was jumping in and out of, first telling himself he was just entertaining his sister by going along with this whole thing, then realizing there was no better options or reasons for what had happened.

  “Just go with the flow.”

  “Hmmm? What did you say?” Sophie was looking up at him with big doe eyes.

  “Oh nothing, just brushing off the dust and getting familiar with this place again. It’s much hotter and wetter than last time. Let’s get through customs, grab our bags, and get out of here.”

  “Mhmm.”

  Thomas frowned and marched along toward the customs desk to wait in line. This airport and security setup was much smaller than the U.S. airports he was used to but it didn’t help to diminish his level of impatience. He didn’t like having to wait and he didn’t like the way the Customs Agent reviewed his paperwork and questioned him about his doings, as if he were some international criminal intent on mayhem. Then, when he would answer, he would be met with silence like his answer wasn’t satisfactory, even though his sole intent, he declared, was a family vacation.

  Once it was accomplished, they got their bags through security and made their way out to the exit, where lines of taxis waited for customers. He grabbed the first one he came to and asked to be taken to the Radisson Hotel in Denarau, which was near where they would be departing from by boat. Sophie had protested initially at the idea of staying in a hotel when time was of the essence but it wasn’t avoidable. It hadn’t been easy to line everything up on such short notice. Just two days ago they were sitting in their living room trying to make sense of a missing child, now they were standing in Fiji, an island in the South Pacific. He wished to hurry as much as possible
too but only so much could be done.

  The boat was the biggest issue. Finding private charters was a challenge to begin with and finding one that could devote five days to two passengers on only a couple of days’ notice was an additional hurdle. Ultimately, he found himself going right back to where he had already been and renting a boat through SeaFiji. He felt it was a great stroke of luck that not only did he get the same boat, but he got the same crew as well. His Captain and Deckhand would be Lomate and Osea, just as before. Two gentlemen he liked very much, who were already familiar with their history, and who had proven themselves to be helpful to him on his previous trip. When he had spoken to them yesterday they were just as helpful, agreeing to move some customers around to free up the boat. Lomate sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him and very determined to be the one to pilot him back to his destination. It seemed they had a bond now.

  Unfortunately, nothing could be ready to leave the same day as their arrival so they had to be patient and wait until the following morning. Something both he and his sister struggled with, but Sophie more so. Which she made clear in the cab on the way to the hotel.

  “Tommy, this is ridiculous, let’s just go down to the marina and get a boat.”

  Thomas took a deep breath, telling himself that if the situation were reversed, he would likely be a whole lot more to deal with then she was.

  “Sis, you know I did everything I could to get us out here and to the island as fast as humanly possible. If we could just go down and grab a boat then that’s what we would be doing. I know it’s hard, impossibly hard, but do your best, okay?” He gave her a squeeze on the leg, hoping to reassure her somewhat. “Everything came together faster than we could have realistically hoped for. It won’t be long now. We just need to get through tonight and we’ll be off first thing in the morning. By this time tomorrow we’ll be there.”

  The cab ride didn’t take long, they were only a few miles away, so it left them the afternoon to prepare themselves for whatever may come in the following days. Of course, Thomas had no true idea just what may come, so preparation was difficult at best. Buying a gun was out of the question. There might be places he could get one but he didn’t have the time to make inquiries and it was a risk. If he were caught then he wouldn’t be making trips anytime soon and he knew Sophie would go on without him. That was out of the question.

  It left him with the survival knife he checked in with his luggage, which he hoped was enough. He also had a length of nylon rope, a flint, and a small, LED flashlight, just in case. That seemed like it covered the basics. Other than that, they were doing this with the assumption they would be coming back with a baby, so they were bringing a swaddling cloth and some cloth diapers, just enough to get them back to the mainland.

  Once they were checked in to the hotel and had their bags unloaded into their rooms they both took turns cleaning off with hot showers and putting themselves in order after such a long plane ride. They both were exhausted, not only from the travel, but the time difference. Fiji was nineteen hours ahead of their own time zone back home. Their appetites were the most pressing, however. They both decided on lunch before anything else.

  Making their way by foot they strolled down the waterfront until they saw a nice, simple restaurant they liked. They ended up both ordering crab and shrimp sandwiches before settling in with their food and their ocean view. Sophie was mainly quiet and contemplative as she gazed out over the water.

  “My baby is out there Thomas, right now, without his mother. Crying and scared. With that … Thing as it’s only company. Who knows what’s happening. What It could be doing right now, this very minute.”

  Thomas remained silent. The same thoughts had been running through his head repeatedly since they left the States but he did his best to ignore them. They only served to make him more anxious, and with no ability to do more than he was already doing, there was no point in it. He certainly couldn’t begrudge his sister though, she was doing amazingly well under the circumstances. She was resolute, his little sister. She always had been. Now she had a baby out there to rescue and protect he didn’t imagine anything would stand in her way. Especially not with him at her side.

  “Do you have any ideas, Thomas? On what we’re going to do? How we’re going to rescue my baby?” Her eyes never left the horizon as she spoke.

  “Specifically, no. But, I do have a loose sort of plan. An idea of how we might learn to generate a plan, at least. We’ll go to Kabara first.” As soon as he mentioned that, Sophie looked at him with some alarm.

  “Thomas! We can’t. We must go directly to the island, not make stops! That’s only going to take us longer.”

  “Sophie, please, hear me out.” He paused for a moment, waiting for her. When she didn’t say anything, he pushed on. “There was a man on Kabara, a villager there, he met with me briefly before I went to your island. Vaqava, that’s the island you were on. He warned us against going there. Apparently, they won’t go there. He said there was an angry God on the island. I blew him off, of course. Fijians seem like superstitious people, but now it seems like something worth knowing about, don’t you think? I mean, what do you know of this … creature?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Not really. I know what it looks like, if my dreams were real. I already explained that much to you and it doesn’t help a whole lot.”

  “Right, so I think it’s worth taking just a little extra time to prepare. It could mean a world of difference, Sophie. Maybe even life or death. We’ll stop just long enough to speak with the villagers again, explain what you saw, and find out what they can tell us, if anything.”

  She listened to his idea and was quiet for a while. Thomas continued to eat, looking out over the water, and waiting patiently. It really was the best idea, he was sure. As anxious as he was to get to Vaqava and see what was really going on, he wanted to do it properly. The thought of running blind into a situation as crazy sounding as this was frightening. Hell, the thought of going into this fully prepared was just as scary, but at least he wanted the best chance to succeed. If this Thing from her visions was real then it was likely he was going to have to fight it, and for all he knew, it really was a God of some sort, and how would he fight a God?

  The idea almost made him laugh. Fighting a God, what was he thinking? Initially he considered perhaps some strange witchcraft was involved, like some island voodoo black magic, but it didn’t sound any more realistic to him than a mythical figure straight out of some old Fijian folklore. Then again, if those things weren’t believable, then it left him with only the alternative. That his sister was responsible for the baby’s disappearance, and that was the least likely scenario he could imagine. Even more so than some big man running around an island with his head on fire and a missing face.

  “Fine, Thomas. We’ll do it your way. I’m sure it’s the best thing.”

  He was so lost in thought he almost jumped when she finally spoke. He looked at her sympathetically, knowing how difficult any decision could be that delayed her getting to her lost baby.

  “It’s the best thing, sis. I’m sure of it. And it won’t take long. Kabara is right on the way. We’ll stop, let Lomate speak with the villagers, and get right back out on the water and over to Vaqava.”

  Sophie nodded but remained quiet. Now the decision was made she barely heard her brother’s response. She stared blankly off into the distant horizon. Her mind was far away, focused on a little pyramid on an island several miles to the North while both hoping - and dreading - her child was there.

  7

  Bolo strode through the village with an abnormal single-mindedness, not only for him but for any other member of the village. Fijians were generally a very sociable and friendly people, so as Bolo passed, looking neither left nor right, people took notice. There was something different about him. It was apparent in his manner and in the quickness of his gait.

  Evenings were a time for celebration in the villages. No Fijian would profess to living a h
igh-paced lifestyle during the day, but for the most part they worked toward putting food on the table. There were plenty of them who would be found in groups along the beach, sharing what beer they managed to accumulate or, if they were especially lucky, cigarettes as well. But generally, adults and children alike all worked toward gathering food for consumption or for sale to the tourists. Each of them going on about their day doing whatever individual tasks needed accomplishing.

  The evening though, that’s when they would truly come together. Life on the island was a mix of leisure and strife. Missing were the high-paced efforts of the modern world, as were the conveniences. Things moved more slowly but tasks also took more doing. When the long days were done was when each of them could shake off the hardships of the day and join in happy merriment. Fires would be tended and food and drink would be cooked and shared, like everything else in Fijian life. What most people not of the island wouldn’t understand was just how communal the culture was. The idea of personal possession didn’t hold the same meaning as for the European peoples, and all white people were Europeans in a Fijians eyes. On the islands, a group of friends won’t be found sitting around, each with their own beer in hand. Instead, they’ll each have their own small cup, and beer will be poured equally amongst the group. Cigarettes will be passed around like a joint, puff-puff-give. Food is supplied by whomever can supply it and each take what they need. This is how things are enjoyed and the Fijians are happy to do it.