The Shadow Mask

by Lin Oliver

  I moved my hand in front of my blindfold … and saw it moving in front of my face from in back of my body! But all these visions were not like normal vision. The light was different. Everything seemed to glow with a soft yellowish light — a light from my mind. I recognized it as the light of the figure who visited me in my dreams. It was all imaginary, but it was also real at the same time.

  “Very good,” Mr. Singh said. “Now travel up the river, around the bend. Do not feel fear. It is perfectly safe. You will find it is quite easy.”

  And it was. I could do it. I really could. All I had to do was believe I could. I floated ahead past all the boats in front of us, then sped ahead of our procession, rounding the bend to a deserted stretch of river, traveling faster and faster, almost out of control, skimming along the brown murky water like a bird.

  But something else was happening at the same time. With each bend, the light of my inner vision grew dimmer, darker, until it was almost pitch-black. Suddenly, the vision was windy and thundering, and I started to feel very afraid. Then I felt a heavy drop of rain on my arm.

  I tore off the mask, panting. “Whoa.”

  “A very good first try, Leo. I have a feeling you’ve done this before. We will try again tomorrow.”

  The hot winds had picked up. Thunder rumbled in the distance, moving closer with each successive roll. We were in a narrow valley of the river with solid and steep rock walls on both sides of us. They soared almost a hundred feet above us.

  “Rain comes now,” Tamon Dong said from the back of the boat.

  As we rounded the next bend, the sky got much darker, and the thunder closer still. A hard wind was blowing, and the green-brown water was swirling with white caps. Big heavy drops of rain began to fall in a steady rhythm. Tamon Dong gunned the motor to catch up with the rest of the party, pulling alongside three of the luggage boats and talking with the other porters. There was panic in their voices, and for good reason.

  With one gigantic bolt of lightning, the sky opened up, and rain poured down on us in sheets. It was the hardest, heaviest rain I’d ever seen. Thunder roared right overhead, followed by another massive bolt of lightning that hit the water just ahead of us. Everyone screamed. The porters, shouting to one another, began making crazy maneuvers. I saw Dmitri scramble to secure his precious duffel while others tried to lash down the supplies that were rocking in the boats. Crane screamed, boats shook in the suddenly turbulent waters. The sound of the flooding upriver was deafening.

  The rain only fell harder as lightning continued to crisscross the sky. A few of the porters tried to paddle, but there was nowhere to land, no safe harbors, no sand banks — only the steep rock walls on either side. I looked up and saw torrents of brown foamy water pouring over the cliffs into the river. And the river was suddenly almost white, churning rapids filled with sticks and rocks. Visibility plummeted.

  “Get us out of here!” Crane screamed. “It’s flooding!”

  “We’ve got to push on,” Dr. Haga replied, his voice hoarse and shredded by the wind and rain. “We must get out of the valley.”

  “Do whatever it takes, Haga!”

  “Everyone, full speed!” Haga cried against the storm.

  All the porters stood up straight and gunned their motors, the tails of their boats sliding out diagonally. We were in heavy rapids. Waves of brown foamy water were pouring over the sides of our boat, and we bobbed up and down like toys in a bathtub, now catching air as we catapulted over a wave, now sinking down into the trough with water pouring over the bow. Two supply boats in front slammed into the rock wall and snagged, only to get freed in time to tumble straight into a swirling rapid. I heard heavy logs and rocks bouncing off our hull. Clutching the sides of the boat, I hid my head under the bow as water poured over me. I heard Diana screaming and glanced up to see her hanging halfway off her boat.

  “Diana!” I started to scream, but a torrent of water filled my mouth, and when I came up for air, I saw that she had righted herself.

  We battled through the heavy rapids in the rock valley for what felt like hours, though I think it was only a few minutes. Finally, our boat cleared the rock walls, but we were cast into a section of the river that seemed to split off in fifteen different directions. There was nowhere safe to land with the rapids still coursing, and the rain and thunder still booming.

  “That way!” I cried, and pointed left to an estuary that seemed the calmest.

  Tamon Dong gunned the engine and went full speed in the direction I was pointing. Everyone followed. We plowed full through more dangerous rapids and more heavy rain, trying to find a safe spot to land, but finding none. I was soaked, head to toe.

  As we catapulted down the estuary, Tamon Dong tried to steer but without much success. We were at the mercy of the storm. Gradually, the thunder died down, and in another few minutes, the rain began to abate until it became just another unthreatening drizzle. And then it stopped altogether.

  Tamon Dong killed the engines, and we drifted, waiting for the other boats to arrive. I looked back at Mr. Singh. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving, and although he was speaking a different language, I could tell he was saying the same phrase over and over again. Beyond us, the river was still churning with the echoes of the storm. Mud and debris were strewn everywhere. The jungle was all around us. From a distance, I heard birds chirping from the interior and looked up to see the slightest sliver of blue sky. All of our party’s boats gathered together in the center of the river. Everyone was safe, although we had lost most of the supplies in the river.

  I searched for Hollis in Dr. Reed’s boat. She looked a little green, but he was fine, actually smiling. He had always been a roller-coaster nut, sneaking on the big ones even before he reached the height limit. Diana seemed totally fine, too. She was busy fending off Dmitri, who was trying to put his arms around her for protection. I wanted to slug him. I couldn’t see if his duffel had made it through the storm, but I hoped it hadn’t.

  It was Crane who was green with fright, hunching over and holding his guts, rocking back and forth.

  “We have missed the turnoff,” Dr. Haga said, pulling out a laminated map from his bag. “We passed the fork miles ago.”

  “Can we go back?” Dr. Reed asked.

  “And battle these currents?” Haga answered. “It is not safe now. We must accept the fact that we are off course.”

  All of the porters were talking among themselves, their voices agitated and shrill.

  “What are they saying, Haga?” Crane asked.

  “They believe the evil tohs are following us and have thrown us off course. They are not familiar with the area.”

  “I thought your men knew this river like the back of their hands?” Crane said. Now that he was safe, he was returning to his usual obnoxious self.

  “They are not my men, Mr. Rathbone, they are their own men. And no one could possibly know everything. They believe we are on a backwater estuary.”

  “That tells me nothing, Haga.”

  Dr. Haga huddled over his map.

  “I cannot place us,” he said. “I do not see this estuary on my map.”

  “Pathetic,” Crane said. “You’re all pathetic! I hate the water, and no one is getting paid today. Now let’s concentrate, Dr. Haga, and find our place.”

  Crane was hiding most of his face in his parka, but I could see that it was all broken out in red splotches.

  The boats remained in a tight circle in the middle of the river while Dr. Haga and Crane studied the map and tried to determine our location. Everyone seemed very tense.

  “How about a little music, people?” Hollis said, pulling out his gedang and nose flute. “Lighten the mood.”

  Holding the drum between his knees, he played a steady beat with one hand and, with the other hand, brought one of his little nose flutes up to his face. Sticking it in his nostril, he played a sweet birdlike note over the plodding drum beat. And then another note, and another, until he was playing a simple me
lody, almost like a children’s song, over the steady beat. I watched his face and noticed, as I often had, how much he looked like our mother when she played music. The way the corners of his mouth arched upward, his eyebrows raised. The way his eyes stayed open, but weren’t really present. That simple melody grew more and more complex, until it transformed into the song he played on the sape in our tent, the one he’d thought he wrote. I saw his look of concentration grow as he played both instruments at once, realizing a goal that maybe he didn’t even remember he’d set.

  “Yeah, Hollis,” I chanted. “Yeah!”

  Even the porters smiled. But not Crane.

  “What is that racket?!” he shrieked. “I hate that terrible music!”

  He turned sharply toward Hollis, his splotchy red face clear for all to see, his shining white teeth bared.

  “Let me see that,” he croaked from the back of his throat, reaching out to Hollis’s boat. He snatched the nose flute from his hand. The drumming stopped. Crane cracked the little bamboo flute in his hand and tossed the broken pieces into the river.

  “Crane, how could you?” Dr. Reed gasped. “How could you?”

  “Just shut up! Everyone just shut up. Give me silence. I’m trying to get us to shore. So just shut up and let me think.”

  Dr. Reed was furious and told Crane so, but I wasn’t watching her — I was looking at Hollis. He hadn’t moved since Crane had snatched his flute, just stayed in exactly the same position, except for his face. I saw his expression change — saw his mouth grow into a thin line, his cheeks tighten, his brow lines thicken, his eyes squint. It was that face, the one he made when I lied about him being adopted, and when he learned about the plane crash. I couldn’t even look at him; I didn’t want to see the tears. All I could do was look past him to the dense trees and the jungle.

  Suddenly, four of the boats, the ones with our gear, gunned their engines and made dramatic 180-degree turns. Their wakes splashed the rest of us, and they took off and sped back up the river from the way we’d just come.

  “Come back, you fools,” Crane called after them. “You can’t leave us here.”

  Apparently, they couldn’t take it anymore, and I didn’t blame them. Crane had shown his true colors with Hollis, how cruel he could be. To them, no amount of money he could pay them was worth it.

  “Go ahead and leave,” he shouted at them. “You’re all fired anyway. And, Haga, I’m holding you personally responsible for the belongings your men just stole.”

  Dr. Haga defended himself vigorously, but I tuned him out, just staring off into the trees and the dark jungle. And then I saw it, a tiny orange flag on top of a bamboo pole ten feet off the shore.

  “Hey, Crane,” I called. “Look. There’s the sign. The orange flag. About two hundred feet up.”

  Crane’s eyes grew wide, and he actually let out what sounded like a high-pitched giggle. “They found it,” he said. “Kavi and Cyril, they did it.” Then, looking at me with a smile on his face and dollar signs in his eyes, he held out his hand to shake mine.

  “Leo, my boy,” he whispered. “I can always count on you.”

  We made it safely to land, carrying only our backpacks and the few supplies we were able to salvage, and found a clearing by the river to set up camp, bare bones as it was. Crane was the first to disembark, and I noticed he was clutching the metal suitcase with the mask against his chest. Of course he was.

  We had no tents and only three bags of supplies had made it safely onshore. Four, if you count the duffel that I saw Dmitri sneak off the boat and stash behind a cluster of ferns. We opened up all the bags and spread the contents out on the still muddy ground. One contained mostly food provisions — dry packages of soup, nuts and raisins, protein bars — enough to sustain us until we reached our destination. The other two were stuffed with clothes, bedding, and assorted necessities for camp. Crane rummaged through and pulled out two tarps for himself, and a dry sleeping bag, moaning about the fact that two bottles of vintage champagne and his feather pillow had not survived the flood.

  We all changed into dry clothes and hung our wet ones on tree branches and vines. Luckily, the weather was humid and warm. While Dr. Haga sat with Crane going over the map, Diana and her mother went behind a stand of trees to change. Hollis and I grabbed whatever had been left in the bottom of the bags. For me, it turned out to be white linen pants from Mr. Singh and a plaid safari shirt of Crane’s. For Hollis, it was pink sweat pants from Diana and a tank top of Dmitri’s that said I AM THE MAN on the back.

  With only two hours of daylight left, Dr. Reed decided that she and Diana had no choice but to stay the night. In the morning, she and Diana would take two of the remaining porters and hike downstream along the river until they came to the fork, where we had originally planned to drop them off. By land, she figured it was no more than two miles. She hoped their guides would be waiting to take them to the village where they were staying, but even if they weren’t there, she knew the way, having been there many times before.

  We all helped gather wood for the fire, everyone but Crane, that is. He was hunched over the metal suitcase, his back to the rest of us, no doubt inspecting the mask to make sure it was undamaged. Dr. Reed took Hollis to pick some mangoes she had seen growing several hundred yards downriver, and I followed Diana into a grove of trees to gather fallen branches.

  “That was pretty exciting,” I said to her back. She didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” I went on. “So you’re mad at me for sticking you with Dmitri. I’m really sorry about that, but we can still hang out tonight.”

  She pushed past me and stooped to snap off some twigs from a larger branch.

  “Those will be good for kindling,” I tried again. “If you need help cutting anything, I’ve got a knife.”

  Still nothing.

  “Listen, Diana, I’m really sorry. I … I’m just not good at that —”

  Suddenly, she wheeled around and glared at me, her green eyes angry and hurt.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what you’re really doing here?” she hissed. “You lied to me. I had to learn it from Dmitri.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That you’re on a secret mission for Crane. That you guys are going to steal something from a village that’s not even on the map. I thought I knew you, Leo, but obviously I don’t.”

  She turned back toward camp. I saw her mother and Hollis returning, Dr. Reed carrying dozens of mangoes in the fold of her shirt.

  “Diana, wait,” I said, chasing after her. “You know Dmitri, he just makes up stories to seem important. You don’t actually believe him?”

  She threw up her arms. “I don’t know, Leo. I know that I don’t believe you. So just stay away from me until tomorrow morning, and I won’t have to see you again.”

  I trailed after her, saying, “Diana, please wait.”

  “Leave me alone, Leo,” she said, breaking into a full run. I jogged after her for a few steps, then stopped and watched her go. By the time I got back to camp, she was with Hollis and Dr. Reed, and none of them wanted much to do with me. After the sun went down, she spread out her tarp next to her mom, rolled over on her stomach, and went to sleep.

  There wouldn’t have been time for a long heart-to-heart with Diana anyway, because I had my hands full with Hollis. As excited and happy as he was to run the rapids on the river, that’s how scared he was when it was time to go to sleep. The kid was like an emotional Ping-Pong ball. I put his tarp down next to mine, gave him my backpack to use as a pillow, and tried to offer him soothing words. It didn’t work.

  “I wish I had a tent,” he said. “I feel like snakes are crawling on me.”

  “There’s nothing on you, bro. Look up at the stars and admire the sky.”

  “I don’t want to. I want to go home. I think I’m getting malaria.”

  “I think you’re fine. Look, there’s my constellation. Leo the Lion.”

  “Your constellation sucks. So do you. I wish you had never
brought me here. I’m not kidding, I feel a snake.”

  I checked his tarp for snakes, not once, but twenty times. Finally, he fell into a troubled sleep. Every now and then, he’d let out a little whimper. I stayed by his side for hours, looking up at the stars, remembering how great it was to watch the night sky with Diana. I craned my neck to see if she was up, but she was still lying there on her stomach, her face turned away from the beautiful sparkling sky.

  The night was filled with sounds, not just the sounds of the frogs in the jungle but the sounds of our human animals, too. Klevko snored like a grizzly bear, and Dmitri like a baby grizzly. They both smacked their lips in between snores in perfect rhythm with each other. Mr. Singh made a kind of humming noise, like he was chanting a single sustained note. Crane clicked his teeth like he was chewing on walnut shells, and every now and then I’d hear him mutter something incoherent. I tried to get lost and travel in the pristine night sky, but the stars above felt so cold and distant.

  It was clear I was never going to fall asleep. After hours of lying there, I couldn’t stand it another minute. Very carefully, I rolled Hollis over and unzipped the pocket of my backpack, pulling out my headphones. And just like I had done on the plane, I slipped them on and listened to the Byong Ku death dance, and my dad narrating his travels in his reassuring steady voice. It seemed impossible to believe that within just a few hours, I would be there, tracing his footsteps, traveling his path.

  There was no melody to follow and no singing, just drum sounds, metallic and echoing like the steel drums in the subway. And like the steel drums, there were several differently tuned drums. They played slowly, one after the other, as if communicating. It was accompanied by a chorus of gongs and bells and chimes. It reminded me of when I used to go to Chinatown for dumplings with my dad. He’d always stop and listen to the wind chimes they sold in all the street stands next to the paper lanterns and ceramic pagodas. Some were made of copper tubes, some bamboo, some glass, and when the breeze blew, their sound filled the air with a harsh persistent ringing in all different pitches and tones. That’s what the Byong Ku death song sounded like, but the sound of shuffling feet in the background, and every now and then a mournful human wail.