“Where is she?”
“She’s here,” Chik said. “You’ll see her when you hit the tree line.”
This was it. I gritted my teeth, stood up, hesitated, then leaped for the shore. My left foot hit water and sank up to my ankle. With my second step, I hit firm ground and plunged into the slit between the trees. My gut and belt buckle tugged against greenery in front, and my shoulders and butt scraped against dense vegetation behind me. I watched the old woman’s white hair disappear off to my left.
Something tickled my neck, trying to slip down my shirt. I didn’t care. My feet were on solid ground. Still I couldn’t shake the sense something was wrong.
I didn’t have time to worry about it. I had to find the old woman. The jungle vegetation was so dense I could be standing next to her and not know it. And it was eerily dark. Despite my exertions, I was barely twenty feet from the river. It was still early afternoon, but the light turned a deeper green with every sideways step.
Back at the river, Johnnie and Chik must have joined Sammy in hacking out a landing for the boat. They splashed around like a bunch of kids. Better them than me. I looked back but couldn’t tell where I had forced my way through the jungle. The old woman was nowhere in sight, and no one was following me. Going forward seemed pointless, but that was my assignment—and she knew where the orchids were.
I was still shoving myself sideways when the guys started yelling. What now?
“Guys, what’s going on?”
The sounds of yelling and thrashing rose, and no one answered my call.
I gave one last look for the old lady and sidled back toward the river. Something was going on at the boat, and I could do more good there than bumbling around in the jungle.
“Coming out,” I shouted. “Really slowly. I don’t think this is going to work. Hey, what’s going on out there? Could somebody swing a machete my way?”
They stopped thrashing around in the water, but no one answered.The forest finally spit me out, my head down, arms waving, trying to clear a path through the bugs.
“I lost the old woman, then I heard you guys. What’s going on?” I said. I raised my eyes off the ground and stared right into the eyes of a small, brown-skinned man, standing in water not ten feet away. An ugly black tattoo covered one side of his face. He wore the universal khaki shorts of the locals and no shirt. Thick brass rings dangled from his stretched earlobes. He held a blowpipe to his mouth. It made a soft “poot” sound.
A dart stung my cheek.
Chapter 6
Captive
I awoke with the right side of my face on fire.
I touched my cheek and screamed. Tears came to my eyes. I gasped and forced myself to lie motionless, taking slow, shallow breaths. The pain retreated into throbbing that kept time with my heart.
Everything was dark. I listened for any sound, felt for any motion. I was alone.
I tried to take stock without reigniting the pain. My arms and legs felt like I’d rolled down a hill of rocks. I tested each joint, hand and foot, flexing, twisting, bending. Despite the soreness, my body parts worked.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth; trying to dislodge it shot pain from my right ear all the way down my jaw. I couldn’t tell if the bone was broken, but I wasn’t about to test it further.
I tasted something funny. I touched my lips and felt tackiness. Drying blood? No, my fingers smelled… green, like leaves or grass.
Gray light soon oozed around me. My right eye felt like it was glued shut. My good eye darted around, sweeping the upper reaches of the hut, trying to make out my surroundings.
I lay on a woven mat in a bamboo-walled hut about the size of my hotel room in Tenom. Given our last location, it was most likely a Dyak shelter, raised six to ten feet off the ground, but smaller than most I had encountered.
All my clothes—shirt, pants, even underwear—were gone. I was completely naked. But no flies or mosquitoes bothered me. That was odd, but good news. I was certain I couldn’t swat bugs without generating waves of pain.
Soft morning sounds seeped through the wooden walls. Two adults talking, a man and a woman, quiet laughter. I levered myself up to a sitting position, and the world swirled around me. I closed my good eye and forced myself to breathe in, breathe out, in, out.
The dizziness passed. I looked around again, hoping to find Johnnie, Chik, and Sammy but saw no evidence of them. They must be isolated in other huts, I thought. Our captors—I assumed the commotion at the river had been a kidnapping—had separated us. Classic POW treatment.
Not that we were at war. Bandit behavior then? But why was I not tied up? Maybe they knew I could not escape with the pain they had inflicted.
I tried to work up some saliva to wet my mouth and my tongue touched the inside of my right cheek. Lightning flashed through my brain, and I plopped backward, my head bouncing on the wooden floor, shooting more waves of agony throughout my body.
Minutes passed. I focused on breathing, in and out, in and out. Eventually I could think of something other than pain, and I remembered.The dart. Someone shot me with a dart, probably tipped with some kind of poison. Whatever it was, it produced root canal pain trebled, quadrupled, quintupled. I wondered just how bad the wound was, but I refused to touch it.
I needed water. I needed to find my companions. I needed to figure out where I was and how we could get back to civilization. But I was afraid to stir and start that pain all over again.
My bladder finally forced me to get moving. I eased over onto my left side, careful to keep my head steady. Up on all fours, I breathed through a wave of dizziness, then crawled toward the light of the door.
Just beyond the doorway, a narrow ramp made from a split log angled to the ground. Beyond lay a clearing of packed dirt with a smoldering fire in the middle. A half-dozen Dyak long houses circled the clearing. At the far end off to one side, three bulbous objects the size of large musk melons dangled from a bamboo rack.
Something about the scene struck me as odd, out of place. My eyes—my good eye—played tricks on me. Those gourds or huge bulbs hanging from the bamboo—I just couldn’t make out what was wrong about them.
Slowly, carefully, making every effort not to start the pain flashing through my head again, I maneuvered onto my backside and backed feet first down the ramp, alternately watching for splinters and trying to focus on that bamboo rack across the clearing.
I was no stranger to Asian fruits and vegetables, but I had never seen this kind before. The husk was rust colored but seemed to be black and rotting near the top.
If only I could see out of both eyes.
The soft-voiced conversations stopped, and deeply tanned Dyak natives, men and women, peered at me from under the long houses.
At the foot of the ramp, I stood on wobbly legs. A young woman, a naked baby at her breast, eyed me, then looked away when I returned her glance.
I had everyone’s attention, but no one spoke or approached. Perhaps I was mistaken. Maybe I was not a prisoner. Just a naked man, lost and hurting.
“Water?”
Forming the word aroused the pain again.
The Dyak natives stood and watched.
I mimicked drinking with my hands, and the young mother dipped a gourd into a wooden pot and stepped toward me. She stopped several yards away and held out the gourd. I smiled and yelped in pain. She jumped back.
What had happened to me that caused so much pain? Had these people been part of it?
The pain settled into a dull throb; I reached a hand to the young woman. She offered the gourd but neither stepped closer nor met my eyes.
I took it in my left hand and brought it to the left edge of my mouth and tilted it. Water, lukewarm with a strong earth scent and taste, wetted my lips. I nodded my thanks.
For several moments, I fed myself the water like medicine. I felt each sip flow over my tongue, down my throat. It turned my stomach. I stopped and waited, fearful of the agony that throwing up would cause.
After a half-dozen sips, I felt stronger in my legs and stumbled across the clearing, stopping every step or two to raise the gourd to my lips. Every face followed my movements, but the eyes darted elsewhere—toward the end of the village and the bamboo stand.
I turned my attention there, too. I wondered if, in addition to the dart wound, I had taken a blow to the head. My brain struggled to make sense of what my eyes saw.
The melons were not fruit at all. The bulbous objects had odd, almost face-like features. An ear. A nose. From a distance, I examined the bottoms of the fruit. They were not round.
“Unh.”
I stifled a sob and dropped the gourd. I stumbled stiff-legged toward the bamboo rack.
Those were human heads.
Hanging in a row, a particularly large one at one end.
“No.”
Tears burned my wounded face. I recognized the oversized head. It was Sammy.
I dropped to my knees and wailed, the agony in my soul dwarfing the pain in my face. My body shook. I collapsed onto all fours. I screamed and screamed.
“No.… No.… No.”
I cried like I had not cried since the night Sarah died.
They had murdered my friends.
A foot pushed me over. I bellowed and swung my fists wildly.
Through the tears, I made out a man standing over me. He wore baggy khaki shorts but no shirt. Brass rings dangled from his earlobes. A black web tattoo covered the right side of his face. I had seen him before. At the river, holding the dart gun.
Now, he gripped a machete, the blade darkened by rust… or blood.The man shouted words I could not understand. Then he turned on the staring villagers. They slipped farther under their houses. I lurched to my feet and toward what was left of my companions.
Each step jolted my body. I howled like the demented, wounded animal that I was.Stepping between the heads and me, the man stuck the machete into the ground, grabbed my throat and turned the wounded side of my face toward him. I slapped at his hand, and he released me.
He turned away, and his eyes glanced over the villagers still huddled under the houses, searching for someone. He yelled at them, taunting them with questions.
The villagers turned their heads, avoiding the machete man’s eyes, but no one spoke.
He stepped toward them, adding wild gestures to his taunts. He ignored the men, pointing to one older woman and then another, demanding an answer to a question I did not understand; no one spoke.
Finally, he whirled back to me, but it was too late.
I swung the machete two-handed with all the strength I could summon and buried the blade deep into his neck. His mouth gaped open like a fish, blood spurted out, and my day went black.
*
My head throbbed… boomp, boomp, boomp… marking time with my heart. I was alone again in the quiet darkness of the hut. A new hurt—the ache of being truly alone—joined the pain in my face.
My friends were gone. Forever. Whatever happened next would happen to me alone. Why?
I thought back to the river landing. I had stepped out of the forest, swatting at mosquitoes. I looked up, and the Dyak I thought of as machete man shot me with his blowgun. I didn’t see Johnnie and the others or any other Dyaks, just the savage machete man.
Had I wounded him in turn? I thought I had. I remembered picking up the machete as he ranted at the villagers. Were they his people? Would they take care of him? Surely they would.
I refused to think about the heads strung together with vines, dangling from that bamboo rack. But I could not help wondering why mine wasn’t hanging there with them. Was it just a matter of time? Had Johnnie, Chik and Sammy already gone through the facial torture I was enduring?
What would they think back in civilization when we did not return?
Surely the Australian Embassy would look for Johnnie and his crew. His superiors would be expecting him to report in. But how could they find him? Us? Me? They hadn’t answered his pings on the satellite phone.
Questions looped through my head, with no answers to short-circuit them. I dozed, but a nightmare disrupted every rest.
In my dream, I lay on blood-soaked ground, held down by four Dyaks. Other natives—men, women and children—stared down at me. Like the Incas, they were making a sacrifice, and I was the offering, the messenger to some god or forest spirit. Soon the man with the machete would stand over me to lop off my head.
I searched frantically for a friendly face but saw only strangers—and the severed heads of Johnnie, Chik, Sammy, and Sarah, my dead wife.
The sun paused its rise directly overhead, and a woman-child approached slowly, her cupped hands outstretched. Her way of walking and her intense gaze reminded me of the old woman who had lured us to the ambush.
She knelt beside me and opened her hands, revealing a black flower no more than an inch high and wide, its stem a mere three inches long. I’d never seen one so dark. It swallowed the light.
In the dream, the woman-child placed the flower on my right cheek. I could feel its tiny petals brush my skin. She stood and backed away; the villagers froze.
My skin tingled, and a small black spider crept into my peripheral vision.
I shook my head to dislodge it. One of the men holding my arms grabbed my forehead and forced my head to the ground. I blinked my eyes wildly, trying to make the spider go away.
I trembled as it entered the web tattooed on my cheek.
At the edge of the crowd, the woman-child watched, and the whisper of a smile touched her lips. Sarah’s head looked down upon me and wept.
Chapter 7
Alone
I came out of my nightmare with the sky lightning through the door opening.
The throbbing in my face had faded into a soft heartbeat. My stomach growled. The faint taste of crushed grass met my tongue as I licked my lips.
I rolled to the left and slowly rose to my hands and knees without setting off explosions of pain. I crawled toward the light.
Peering through the opening, I saw no one. I listened for the early morning sounds I’d heard before, but there was nothing. No morning talk. No quiet laughter. Even the forest was silent. No bird shrieks, no monkey chatter.
I shuddered. The silence was unnatural and unnerving.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
No one answered.
Silence in a tropical forest means one thing: Danger. Predators. Big predators. Naked and unarmed, I scanned the thin light. Other huts appeared as dark blobs. I could make out nothing of the rack holding the heads of my friends.
I listened to the silence until my ears hurt.
Ever so slowly, the huts took on shapes, then dark color, and finally true color. I knelt on all fours in the opening, listening, peering into the emptiness.
My body finally forced me to act. I had to pee, and my bowels demanded attention.
I lay on my stomach and peered under the hut, searching for surprises, though I knew that I probably wouldn’t see a snake before it struck or a spider before it landed on me.
I got to my knees, pulled myself to my feet, and shuffled down the log ramp one step at a time, looking side to side, up and down, and behind me before each step. I felt alone, but I didn’t feel safe. I felt dread. It seemed hotter than it should at dawn, more humid, the air too close around my body.
Maybe a storm was coming. That would quiet the animals in the forest, but it wouldn’t explain the absence of the villagers.
At the bottom of the ramp, I turned in a complete circle, willing some kind of movement, even a predator. I saw none but could not shake the sense of foreboding.
I shambled through the village, turning a complete circle every few steps. The silence brought the throbbing back to my head. Was I going mad? That pounding? That hunger for a response, a noise, any kind of stimulus?
I zigzagged from house to house, taking the longest possible route to the opposite end of the clearing.
The heads were gone. Machete man’s body lay whe
re he and I had tumbled together. His skinny body looked bloated, black with insect life. He was dead, his head gone.
For the last two—three?—days, nothing had made sense, and now this.
Flies retreated as I inched forward.
I shivered in the humid air and looked around again at the empty collection of huts. Who had killed machete man? The villagers? Had they killed him and fled? Why? Why take his head?
Mystery piled on mystery. Only one thing was certain: Johnnie was wrong. Borneo still had headhunters.
I left the bugs to their feast and continued my search for signs of life and a way out.
Cold ashes filled cooking pits, but no baskets, cooking utensils, or water containers sat nearby. A few palm leaves, the all-purpose jungle wrap, lay here and there but there was nothing to wrap. Everyone and everything had disappeared.
Aside from thirst, and the on-again, off-again pain in my face, I felt better physically than I had since waking that first day. Was that just yesterday? I was steady on my feet; my head seemed clear. I crawled like an oversized sloth up to the narrow landing of “my” hut and peeked through the doorway.
Opposite the entrance, not far from where I had dreamed my nightmare, my camera bag hung from a rafter. Beneath it was a pile of clothes. A gourd and a folded leaf sat beside the clothes.
I reached for the gourd, sniffed and smelled the familiar scent of grass and leaves. I dipped a finger and tested it. Grass and leaves, but definitely watery.
I sipped and swirled the liquid around my mouth. It tasted as good as anything I’d ordered in a bar. I sipped again. Relief flowed through me. I licked my lips—delicious. I hoped the microbes in it wouldn’t treat me too badly.
Unsure how long I would have to make the liquid last, I set the gourd on the floor and propped it against a wall. I picked up the leaf, hoping it would contain food. I found a bone, about twice as long as a chicken wing, covered with meat that ranged from raw to charred. A monkey bone? Tiny insects flew away. Maggots—and God knows what else. My stomach lurched at the thought of eating it, and I decided to save it as a last resort.
The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Page 5
