Pages Torn From a Travel Journal

by Edward Lee

  “I believe you’re referring to the tenets of what’s colloquially known as ‘Jungle Justice,’ or the proper engagement of the law where there are no formal laws,” I said.

  “Only laws anyone needs is these laws here,” & from a pocket the big man produced a weathered Bible. “‘A eye for a eye,’ it says. Don’t need no fancified big-city lawyer ta tell what that means.”

  In spite of the situation’s gravity, I smiled at the man’s simple yet unblemished morality. “No, one most assuredly does not.”

  A big finger accentuated his words. “All’s I’se tellin’ ya this fer is so ya know, in case what’cher ‘bout ta see comes ta be too much fer ya.”

  I followed, thinking deeply. Did he mean I was about to witness an execution? Part of my upbringing’s urbanity told me how wrong this was, but who was I to judge? Who was I to condemn? This was another world, far apart from me, & possibly more genuine than mine. I had no right to interfere or to post objection. & besides . . .

  I wanted to see this creature die. In all honesty? I would thrill to watch a child-killer swing at the end of a rope.

  Deeper & deeper we wended into the dim, tunnel-like forest. How Eamon could remember each twist & turn amazed me; it was a nighted maze with no visual points of reference, yet in a short while our steps disgorged us into a spacious clearing of pin-drop silence lit by torches mounted on sticks, & amid all this congregated at least a dozen more hillfolk, men & women, all dowdily dressed, still, & blank-faced. When they saw that the culprit had been captured, a collective sigh seemed to issue like a gust of timid breeze.

  “We got him!” Eamon announced, then turned to me. “And it was this fella here who done it.”

  All eyes homed on my face.

  Were these the “creekers” that Nate had spoken so lewdly off? Many of the bumpkinly women were quite comely & robust-bosomed, & appareled in scant sewings of cloth that revealed much of their shapely physiques. Did some of them eye me with wantonness after Eamon, clearly the clan’s foreman, had announced my participation in the scoundrel’s capture? No, the notion was absurd. What must have I been thinking?

  A canteen derived from an animal duodenum was thrust before me–crude but effective. I upended it & poured cool spring water into my mouth. There was no gainly way to do this but the drink was much needed & heartened me at once.

  “Step on over, boys,” Eamon cracked again, & as if from thin air 2 smudge-cheeked boys appeared, sheepishly looking down. “This here is . . . Why, I didn’t catch’yer name, Sir.”

  “Howard,” I said.

  “This here’s Howard,” he addressed the boys, “and a very brave man he is.”

  “Really, it was nothing,” I reiterated uncomfortably. “More luck than–”

  “Howard, I am a mite honoured ta introduce ya to my two boys, Clonner’n Jake. Clonner’s six, Jake’s five.”

  “Fine young men, both of you,” I addressed the lean children & shook their small hands. “And it is a stalwart and just-minded man indeed that you two have for a father.”

  Oddly, the boys seemed impressed by my presence, perhaps even awed; then one of them stepped forward to stammer, “Yuh-you up’n catched the devil-man who done that horriblest thang ta Sary?”

  “That he did, Jake, and all’a our folk can now sleep easy on account’a it,” Eamon said. “Howard’s from the outside world, the city, so’s you two can see not all city folks is all balled up like most.”

  “The city has its attributes, true,” I said, “but it seems to me that truly genuine living is far better experienced in the cusp of nature, as you two excellent boys have the privilege of knowing firsthand.”

  Eamon wagged a finger. “Now you boys listen ta Howard, ‘cos what he says is right,” & then he smiled proudly. I was about to make more discourse with the 2 lads, but the sudden sound of footsteps crunching thicket resounded about the clearing. All our glances snapped over, then, when in a Stygian gap betwixt 2 shaggy trees, a pair of men appeared, solemn-faced as the others, each bearing an end of a wooden table, clearly hand-hewn.

  “It’s time, Eamon,” intoned an older man amongst the congregation; perhaps this would be the clan’s elder.

  Eamon nodded. “Clonner, Jake, run along back the shack now.”

  “Aw, but Paw,” whined the younger one. “Cain’t we stay’n have a gander?”

  “Yeah, Paw,” implored the other, Clonner. “We wanna watch the—”

  It was the power of Eamon’s stare that cut the plea off effective as a knife through a sausage. “This here’s grown-up tendin’s, and ya both know it. Don’t make me tell ya agin, lest we’ll’se be visitin’ the woodshed.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the boys whispered in concert. I bade them both farewell, after which they obediently scurried away.

  “Fine, fine boys, indeed,” I said. “In their eyes I see initiative, fortitude, and accountability.”

  “That’s dang kind’a you to say, and I’se shore they’se made finer still by a-meetin’ you. I pray God some’a it rubs off.”

  Eamon’s compliments had kept me sidetracked; so had the admiring glances from the other female “creekers.” It was uncanny. I knew that I was the curiosa here, the metropolitan in the midst of backwoodsers, yet hardly a hero. I noticed one young woman in particular, a fascinating albino with pinkish eyes & clearly the most curvaceous build of all the other women. Her high, plump breasts seemed hammocked on her chest by the merest patch-works of fabric, while her groin was covered by stitched clippings of denim barely ample enough to hide all the intricacies of her privates. From there, long, immaculately toned legs descended to petite, unshod feet; & the waist-edge of her shorts hung so low that several strands of whitish nether-hair escaped their boundaries. Perspiration misted the exposed midriff. Her eyes held fast on mine, then she daintily licked her lips . . .

  My, I thought.

  But it was the pair of table-haulers that reclaimed my attention. Something heavy was insinuating itself upon the clearing, something heavy in an abstract sense, intangible as it was grave. Eamon directed the haulers to “Set ‘er down right smack-dab in the middle, men,” & then the table was placed in the center of this eerie torch-lit nook. “The table,” I uttered. “Is the killer to be—” but before I could finish with the word “decapitated,” Eamon said, “It’s how things’re done in this sitch-er-ay-shun, Howard, and how they’se been done fer a long, long spell. There ain’t no justice less’n the worst’a crimes are righted by the worst’a punishments.” He looked at me stolidly. “‘A eye fer a eye’.”

  I nodded, holding my inquisitiveness. Decapitation certainly seemed in order for such a monster, yet I sensed this was not to be; & when I looked again, I noted that said monster had been gagged & then securely lashed to the table with stout sisal.

  “It’s how things’re done,” Eamon added in a softer tone. “It ain’t city ways, but it’s right ways,” & with that cryptic remark, he deputed himself to the table as all the watchers seemed to huddle together to watch now: the men keen-eyed & sobersided, while the women seemed quietly enlivened. Some seemed nervous in a paradoxical anticipation, holding hands, even trembling.

  Did the torchlight faintly dim? Slowly a shroud of the primeval settled over the gathering & above all else, a silence that was spectral, a mood like watching some anciently tribal funerary. Yet this was no burial, this was an execution.

  “Good folks’a the land, good folks’a God,” Eamon began to all, his voice carrying. “May we all pray fer the precious soul’a our Sary May Boover who was taken from us so horribly.” Everyone bowed their heads then; eyes closed & lips offering unvoiced supplication. After a flickering pause, Eamon went on. “‘Tis true that this was a awful happenin’ to occur but ‘tis truer that the Lord our God works in mysterious ways so’s that no bad death kin ever really be bad, because in death come life eternal.” Eamon’s burning eyes looked then to me. “And may God bless ‘specially the newcomer, Howard, whose bravery saw fit ta end the horror that t
he Prince’a Darkness done dropped inta our midst . . . ”

  The silence thickened uncomfortably as so many sets of eyes looked at me in assuagement, gratitude, & even wonder.

  “And may God bless us all’n give us the dang strength ta live in His ways, be good ta those good ta us, and ta do what’s right in the dag-blasted face’a evil!” Eamon’s sudden exclamation reverberated through the woods.

  All but I tensed when Eamon ended his oratory & sure-footedly approached the table on which the captive shuddered. For a moment, un-infringed silence fell, such that the convict’s very heart could be heard beating frantically in his rising & falling chest, a muffled yet somehow whining staccato. The monstrous man’s corrupted eyes blazed as he gnawed the gag.

  Eamon’s head bowed in a final unspoken prayer, then in a gesture that seemed ritualistic, one of the congregation parted without noticeable instruction.

  It was the shapely albino, & I must admit my own heart surged faster at my seeing her. Nature had uniquely paled the pinkish skin with a tone like deep fog; that & the odd sprawl of crinkly grey-tinged reddish hair on a woman so rife with youth gave her a sexually alien aura, in unison with the rest of her physical nomenclature which could only be regarded as supreme. It was not my nature to apprise women with such intent physical awe (I’d done the same with Bliss, though not so overtly) but now, in this foreign scenario, this unbeknownst recess of peopled wilderness . . .

  I could not help myself.

  The woman’s sheer mammiferousness must be singing the same song to every man in the clearing, her perfect legs sleek; her taut but spacious buttocks flexing with each noiseless step forward; & the breasts rocking in the spare hammock of fabric were enough to break a monk’s vows. I had to tear my eyes off the young woman to keep from seeming a lecher; only then did I notice that in this unsignaled dispatch to the table, she’d brought an implement with her.

  A mallet.

  I believe it was a hubbing mallet: a jar-sized striking-head (more than likely hickory), padded with thick leather. What on Yuggoth could that be for? the tool’s appearance forced me to wonder. In a motion somehow reverent, the albiness passed the mallet to Eamon, then lithely turned to depart; before returning to her place in the circle, though, she painted me with a glance that seemed famished, but I mean famished in a wanton way.

  The eerie atmosphere left me wont to believe that everyone in attendance knew what was about to take place–everyone but me. The sense of expectancy became semi-palpable, like heavy wood-smoke, & there seemed a briary static in the air which raised gooseflesh. It was my inclination that Eamon had spoken his final words before this primal rite of execution commenced. Would he stove in the culprit’s skull? Fracture his bones? What other use could there be for a mallet in so aboriginal a scenario?

  I blinked. Keyed as I was with curiosity , impulse shot my eyes toward the albiness. No longer was she appraising me; she was intent on the table—

  Whack . . .

  I jerked at the less-than-substantial sound, which seemed a restrained impact followed by a sonic flatness–it’s the only way I can describe it. I refocused on the epicenter . . .

  The convict shuddered as if convulsant upon the stout table. What had happened?

  Whack . . .

  The sonic flatness again, but now I’d gleaned its source. Eamon had vised the killer’s head down against the table by pressing his large hand against the fear-shocked rictus, & with his other hand very meticulously buffeted the crown of the culprit’s skull with the mallet. Yet even this second blow did not cause death, & this mystified me. Was not death the goal of an execution? Eamon’s mallet-strikes were clearly charged with finesse, not determinate force.

  Now the convict’s violent, heel-thumping convulsions weakened to a low shivering. Meanwhile, Eamon had disposed of the rough tool & produced a smallish knife in order to . . .

  What IS this? I thought.

  The big backwoodsman crouched over &, with a sharpened focus & steady hand, dragged the knife-tip around the top of the head in the attitude of a headband. Instantly, a thread-like crimson line appeared, & following this inexplicable action . . .

  My eyes bulged.

  Eamon righted his stance, worked his stubby fingers under the incision he’d just effected, & without forethought peeled the culprit’s scalp off the skull.

  My conscious mind escaped me now, leaving only a leftover of sentience, which the silence amplified. The psychic drone that pestered me previously now howled banshee-like in my head.

  My head, I say, while however the execution’s most salient feature was clearly the head of the now-deceased child-murderer/escaped convict. The top of the bare skull at this point of progression showed blaringly as the ravaged scalp was flung away. The impact of the mallet was now plain: the boned dome remained intact yet slightly imploded, & webbed by cracks. Eamon engaged the knife-tip to aggravate the webbing & disturb what remained of the dome’s now unsound integrity, after which he began to pluck out the pieces of fractured bone.

  Why, I wondered. Why?

  This indisputably reasonable enquiry–little did I know then–would be answered posthaste.

  Eamon’s barbarous onus left an opened jigsaw of the skull-top, producing a roundish opening where the bone-pieces had been. Within, the convoluted meat of the white-pink brain was easily viewed, showing beneath ragged bits of torn protective derma. Little blood was evident, though another clear liquid made a short but copious effusion from the insult, which I could only suspect to be spinal fluid. I winced, watching on along with the others: next Eamon’s knife blade was sunk once vertically into exposed matter, to the hilt.

  I’d thought the convict dead by then, but upon the knife’s insertion, the prone body strained once very quickly, bowed upward, then flopped inert.

  A long but subdued Ahhhhhhhhhh . . . , issued from the advertent watchers.

  Eamon’s eyes blazed now as the killer’s had, but not with iniquity, with retribution; & it was these eyes that surveyed the circle of hushed onlookers. Then came a signal: a knowing nod. From the human rotary, only the male members detached themselves, to merge into a snakelike line behind Eamon at the (& do pardon the pun) the “head” of the table.

  That premonitory “prickling” of my hands which had shadowed me all the day now overwhelmed my entire being such that I felt electrically charged. Because, you see, what followed can only be transliterated as silent, measured, purposeful, & very cumulative insanity.

  I must select my words with care.

  The comeliest of the women spectating from the circle (concurrently, mind you, as if automatonic) divorced themselves of their exiguous (& in some cases, almost non-existent) garb, to stand wild-eyed, sweating, & utterly naked in the firelight. This licentious display seized my attention all-inclusively as I suspect it would any natural man. Nipples jutting like plugs from young, heavy breasts; trim, enticing abdomens; toned, coltish legs; & abundantly furred pubises–these vivid & potent sights were what commandeered my gaze; I gulped at the virtual smorgasbord of visual rapture, & began to sweat profusely about the collar. But the figure my eyes were hottest for was that of the uniquely nubile albiness, & when she was found, my loins cringed in a dense, throat-parching, & sex-starved frisson. A concupiscent wraith she was, a shadow-land siren song, with her blanched & oddly shining skin & the head full of akink hair the color of anemic blood dusted by a whiteness that was pallid & lustrous simultaneously. Her body burgeoned as the ripest fruit. She eyed me again, an inviting leer, but stood poised as if her intention was to brazenly set her body out for showcase to the queue of men behind Eamon. I knew I was not in error when I noticed all said men scanning these nude enchantresses, their eyes asquint, their thoughts clearly fuming in ruttish intent. Was this to be some parachronistic Druid orgy, or a moon-lit fertility jubal as those slavering, totemistic rites which took place 5 millennia agone in the name of the Earth Mother? Could something so archaically bacchanalesque have somehow transplanted itself here?


  No. This was something else altogether. Something more methodized, yet arcane & immemorially inhered nonetheless.

  Something, too, my most ghastly nightmares could never have concocted.

  At last, my will supervened the nagging lust in my heart, & I forced my eyes away from the sultry agglomeration of unclothed women, to look—

  Gad, I can scarcely recount . . .

  To look back at the head of the table.

  What I saw is simpler to baldly state, & that was this: Eamon was copulating with the dead man’s head.

  Yes.

  His work-pants ringed his ankles, his large hands pressed against the ears of the decedent, while his hips . . . thrust to & fro.

  Hence, the function of the inscrutable knife-slit, to create a proper egress for the . . .

  The act.

  Horrific as this was, I pinpointed my vision on the area of (for lack of better terminology) violation; &, lo, too well I could see the glistening stem of Eamon’s erection pistoning in & out of the convict’s brain. Slowly, at first, then faster, harder. Each appalling stroke shot Eamon’s eyes to a different woman, no doubt to sustain the necessary level of excitement for this ultimately unexciting task. Eamon’s face began to strain, eyes puffing now, hips battering the crown of the convicts’ head, faster, harder, frenetic. All that could be heard were the muted thumps of each buffeting impact of pelvis to head, & the synchronous wet crinkle.

  It was then that someone said, “Hump it . . . ”

  Then a louder statement, “Hump it, Eamon!”

  Another voice, louder still, “Git’cher dick up in there deep, brother!”

  Next, a woman’s voice, half-shrieking, “Fuck his brain ta puddin’, Eamon!”

  Then the loudest booming voice so far, that of the elder I’d glimpsed earlier: “EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-haaaa, Eamon! Hump that head, son! I say HUMP it!”

  It was as though that trumpet-blast rebel vociferation had in some unknowable way unloosed total orgiastic endorsement. & hence forward?