Hank's Radio (Haunted Collection Series Book 4)

by Ron Ripley

  To the left of him was a small laptop, the screen showing four distinct views. He had placed cameras at each of the compasses cardinal points, and he watched Korzh. Bontoc needed to know how the man planned to adapt, and what he could do to counter those plans.

  Bontoc’s healing wounds itched, and he smiled at the discomfort.

  It would help to keep him awake.

  He had no wish to sleep until the morning. Stefan Korzh, Bontoc was certain, would keep his travels to the daytime, when he might easily observe anything unusual. But it was better to be prepared for every eventuality.

  Korzh had reminded him of that inside the warehouse.

  ***

  Most of what Stefan had ordered arrived early in the morning, and he spent the better part of the day with the goods. He assembled those items that needed to be, and he had gone about the interior, establishing positions and securing mounting brackets for low-light cameras. Stefan did as little work outside as possible.

  He did not doubt the stranger was out there, watching him, and since the man had attempted to kill Stefan with a knife, he believed he had little to fear from any sort of rifle.

  It didn’t stop him from wearing body armor under a sweatshirt.

  Sitting back in his chair, Stefan picked up his scanner and turned it on. Within seconds, the device gave off a high squeak and he smiled. Someone was using a wireless relay system nearby to transmit a live feed.

  Later, he thought, I’ll hack into the feed later.

  ***

  Victor had left the two teenagers in the kitchen, the two of them debating the pros and cons of Tolkien’s trilogy on film in comparison to the original work. He went into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes, and lay down on the bed. Victor rolled onto his side and stared at the wall for a moment. The room was dark with only the light from the hall serving as the faintest of illumination. Beyond the walls, night had descended, and he wondered where Korzh was, and what sort of havoc he would wreak next.

  With a sigh, Victor turned over, picked up the framed picture of Erin reading and clutched it to his chest. He twisted back to the wall again and closed his eyes, hoping he would dream of nothing more than his wife’s smile and the sun in her hair.

  * * *

  Bonus Scene Chapter 1: Seeing without Sight

  Bontoc, in spite of being tall for his fourteen years, sat like a small child beside his mother. The white doctor looked at them both, his shoulders sagged, and he said in his British accent, “I’m sorry, boy, but she’s blind. Your father’s gone too far this time.”

  His mother turned her head, revealing the ravages and results of his father’s beatings. Both of her eyes had swollen shut and her lips were puffed and bloodied. Cuts and bruises lined both of her fine cheekbones, and Bontoc wondered how many teeth his father had knocked out of his mother’s mouth.

  “Boy,” the doctor said, straightening up and taking out a pocket-square. The man wiped down his deeply tanned forehead, then the back of his equally dark neck and said, “Might I speak with you outside for a moment?”

  Bontoc nodded, squeezed his mother’s hand once, and stood up, following the man out of the small room, and then out of the equally small house. They stood together in the front yard, the moonlight bright and strong. The chickens made odd sounds as they slept in their hen house, and snorts rose up from the pigs within their sty. Around them, the comforting smells of the jungle and the world twisted, and they wound their way through the night.

  “She won’t see again,” the doctor said, plucking a battered cigarette case out from the pocket of his shirt. His hands trembled as he lit the cigarette, muttering, “Damned malaria.”

  After letting his first breath of smoke out, the doctor continued. “She’ll need you. You know that. You’ll need to be her eyes. I know that you’re smart enough to run this place on your own, and to care for her as well.”

  Bontoc continued to listen as he watched the man. The doctor was a curious fellow. Shorter than most of the men Bontoc had seen, and the Britishman walked with a distinct limp, almost as if one leg was shorter than the other. The man’s blonde hair was almost translucent in the moonlight and had Bontoc not seen it himself, he would not have believed a white man could tan so darkly.

  “Your father may return,” the doctor added, tapping the ash of the cigarette out onto the packed dirt of the yard. “I doubt it. But he might. There is a limit for the others, a line per se. Your father has crossed it. I do believe that should he return, the other men in the village might well kill him.”

  “They won’t,” Bontoc said.

  The doctor looked at him in surprise. With a raised eyebrow he asked, “No?”

  Bontoc shook his head and looked out into the darkness of the jungle, into which his father had fled.

  “No,” Bontoc said again. “I will.”

  Bonus Scene Chapter 2: Assistance and the Beginning

  Bontoc slung his pack over his shoulder and walked out of his yard. It had been three weeks since the doctor’s diagnosis of blindness for his mother.

  The Britishman had been correct.

  The woman’s sight was gone, vanished like his father. Bontoc knew the man wasn’t coming back. There would be no way to wait and plot his vengeance. His father had taken his heads down from their shelves. No longer would the power of the dead protect the man’s home, or his family.

  He would, Bontoc knew, take that strength elsewhere.

  Bontoc glanced back at the house. His aunt’s voice drifted out of the open windows as she sang songs for her sister.

  Satisfied that all was as well as it could be, Bontoc headed to the east, in the opposite direction his father had fled in. Bontoc needed assistance with the hunt, and he knew where to get it.

  He passed by the few other houses in their small village, a village with no name, and no aspirations for one. Generations had lived and died in the houses. Those who prayed to the white God traveled to do so, and no one cared who did or didn’t.

  Bontoc crossed the thin stream that supplied them with their water, and then found the path that so few people dared to tread.

  Even his father had been fearful of the dead on that trail through the jungle.

  But Bontoc never had a fear of the dead. He left them alone, and they, in their turn, did the same.

  He followed the path in silence, his bare feet firm upon the ground, his eyes fixed upon the same. There was nothing he feared in the jungle. Nothing that could harm him that he could not defeat, or run from if need be.

  As the trail twisted deeper into the absolute darkness provided by the jungle canopy, Bontoc slowed his pace. He felt his way with his hands and feet and memory. Soon his left foot found something cool and metallic, and he was where he needed to be.

  Bontoc eased himself down to the jungle floor, mindful of the metal around him. He took off his pack, removed a box of matches and a single, fat candle. The wax was a dull red color, the tallow having been mixed with the blood of a slain carabao. When he lit the wick, Bontoc’s nose wrinkled at the pungent stench of death that sprang up from the earth.

  He blinked several times, allowing his sight to return to normal. Beyond the immediate glow of the candle’s tall, flickering flame, Bontoc saw what he had been seeking.

  The battered remnants of an American plane.

  It had been shot down when the Japanese had invaded the place, long before Bontoc had been born. The pilot had lived, but he had been trapped in the confines of the plane. When the Japanese had arrived at the crash site, the American had shot several of them with his pistol.

  Then he had shot himself to ensure he was not taken prisoner.

  The Japanese had extracted the American’s body, and they had laid it out beside the plane. He had fought honorably, and so they treated him like a man, without defiling his corpse.

  Bontoc knew all of this because the dead had told him.

  “Ishihara,” Bontoc said. “Are you still here?”

  “And where else would I b
e?” the ghost asked in his accented English. “No one has come to claim my bones. Until I am cremated and my ashes sent home to Yasukuni Shrine, I will be here, in this damned jungle.”

  Ishihara formed out of the darkness, a blurred outline of a man. As Bontoc watched, the diminutive Japanese ghost slowly gained solidity, and soon he resembled an almost living person. There was a small hole in the upper left of the dead man’s forehead, and Bontoc knew from prior experience that the exit wound had claimed nearly all of the back of Ishihara’s skull.

  “Ishihara,” Bontoc said, choosing his words with care, “do all of your bones need to be cremated and returned to Japan?”

  The dead man eyed him warily and answered, “As many as possible. But, there are only a few that remain now. My skull, for one, is beneath the right wing of the plane. And there was part of a femur near the fuselage. The jungle and its denizens have consumed the rest.”

  Bontoc stroked his chin, then asked, “If I swear to cremate your remains, and to bring them to the shrine, will you help me?”

  Ishihara’s eyes widened in surprise, and he nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then I will bring your skull and your femur with me. I need help,” Bontoc said.

  “With what?” the Japanese ghost asked, getting to his feet.

  “I need to find my father,” Bontoc answered.

  “Why?” the dead man asked.

  “To kill him,” Bontoc stated.

  Ishihara hesitated, then said, “Why?”

  “He blinded my mother,” Bontoc replied. “I want his head.”

  The dead man pondered the answer for a moment, then he nodded. “So be it. Come, I will show you where the bones are.”

  Bontoc stood up and followed the Japanese ghost, and sought to find the dead man’s remains in the darkness.

  Bonus Scene Chapter 3: On the Path

  “There is a village ahead,” Ishihara stated, appearing out of the shadows and surprising Bontoc.

  He nodded to hide the fact that he had been caught unaware.

  “I advise caution,” Ishihara continued. “This place, it was strange before I was killed. The word was that even the Americans and the English would not approach it in groups of less than ten.”

  “I must know if he passed through,” Bontoc said in a low voice.

  For the past four days, he had walked steadily through the jungle. He had come upon one other village, and they had seen his father. Ishihara served as excellent protection for when Bontoc needed to sleep, and as advance warning against some of the other dangers of the jungle. And not all threats came from animals.

  There were a great many men to be wary of as well.

  Bontoc understood that the village Ishihara had returned from might well prove dangerous, but if he was to avenge his mother, then it was a risk he had to take.

  And living with his father had been full of risks.

  While Bontoc had not been beaten as severely or as often as his mother had, he had still suffered abuse at his father’s hands. Numerous fingers and toes had been broken. His nose as well. He remembered vividly the sensation of having the fingernails of his left hand pulled out, and the rubbing of salt into open wounds.

  His father was a violent man, and while Bontoc knew he had to be disciplined for his transgressions, he refused to accept the abuse his father had heaped upon his mother.

  Too often, she had shielded Bontoc from the man’s violence.

  Her blinding had been too much.

  “I need to know,” Bontoc said again.

  The ghost circled around him for a moment, an act identified by the motion of cool air in the jungle heat. Finally, Ishihara said, “Fine. I will stay close and do what I can.”

  Bontoc followed the trail into an opening, a wide field spreading out in front of him. The path shifted into a road nearly six feet in width and made of hard-packed dirt. Ahead of him, he saw the village in the late afternoon’s light. The smell of roasting chickens and pigs was tempting, and Bontoc’s mouth watered.

  As he approached the rough collection of houses that marked the village proper, several young men came out of a house and looked at him. Their expressions were hostile, their hands on the hilts of their bolos. A few women of various ages slipped back into their homes, and Bontoc felt an uncomfortable sensation crawl up his spine.

  The people should have called out to him. Invited him to eat and ask after his travels.

  It was unheard of for a boy to be ignored by the women, and to be glared at in such a hostile fashion by others.

  More young men joined the first group, and they surrounded Bontoc as he came to a stop.

  He glanced from one to another, and he understood that he would be unable to run from them all.

  There would be no chance for him to make it to the safety of the jungle. And if he ran, he would be too tired to fend them off.

  Bontoc spread his feet wide, forced himself to smile and called out to the tallest of the young men, “Hello. I seek news.”

  “Of what?” a smaller man asked. He stood to the left of the taller one.

  “My father,” Bontoc answered. “He may have passed through here several days ago.”

  He began to describe the man to them, but the shorter one cut him off.

  “We don’t care,” the man said, with a cutting motion of his hand. “You should not have come here.”

  “Then I will leave,” Bontoc replied, and he turned to do exactly that.

  The sliding of bolos out of sheathes was a rough and sickening sound.

  Bontoc felt his anger rise.

  “You will not,” the shorter one said, taking a step forward.

  Bontoc faced the young man and looked him up and down. The stranger was wiry, his grip on his bolo loose, but sure. He was shirtless and wearing jeans, barefoot in the warmth.

  “You came without permission,” the short man continued. “You will not be allowed to leave. Few know of us, and we will keep it that way.”

  With a sharp cry of anger, the tall man sprang at Bontoc, the bolo raised high.

  Bontoc didn’t run.

  Instead, he launched himself at his attacker, catching him off guard and off balance. He drove his shoulder into the man’s rib cage, bones cracking as he did so. A fist to the groin crushed the man’s organ, and hot vomit spilled down Bontoc’s back. As the man collapsed over him, Bontoc tore the bolo out of his hand, reversed the blade and drove it deep into the stranger’s belly.

  The weapon was sharp, the steel sliding in with grace and ease.

  Bontoc twisted it, felt the man convulse, and then pulled up and out.

  The thick stench of human waste and the iron tang of blood assailed Bontoc’s nose, and as he let the dying man slide off his shoulder to the ground, he smiled.

  Around him the others stood in shock, mouths agape and eyes wide.

  Bontoc wasted no time, throwing himself at the man with whom he had spoken.

  A man screamed in horror and pain behind Bontoc, and he knew that Ishihara had joined the fight. While the unseen man’s exclamation jarred the speaker into action, it was too little and too late.

  Bontoc had already reached him, and as the man tried to bring his own bolo up to defend himself, Bontoc’s stolen blade bit into the other’s neck.

  The blow was clean, smooth, and strong.

  The smaller man’s head rolled off to the ground, bouncing with the thick, heavy sound of a gourd striking the earth. For a moment, the headless corpse swayed on its feet, blood pulsing up out of the abbreviated neck for another second, and then the entire body fell backward.

  By the time the corpse joined its head, Bontoc found himself battling another man. The fight was short and brutal, and it left him bloodied but alive.

  When he turned to find another opponent, he discovered that there were none left to fight.

  Ishihara remained, two men dead beside him. The others had fled the village, leaving Bontoc and the ghost alone in the center. From one of the houses came a long, mournf
ul wail.

  A cold anger settled over Bontoc, and he walked to the closest house. He tore a lantern down from the left of the doorway and saw that its reservoir was almost half full of kerosene. In silence, he returned to the body of the tall man, stripped him of his pants, and used the bolo to cut it into rags.

  Ishihara watched him, a small smile playing across the dead man’s face.

  When he had finished with his task, Bontoc splashed kerosene onto the fabric. From his pack, he removed his matches, and calmly went about the business of burning the village to the ground.

  The flames lit the evening sky, and the curses of the village’s women followed Bontoc and Ishihara back into the jungle.

  Bontoc didn’t care.

  If he had the time, he would have stayed and killed every woman and child, too.

  But family came first.

  Bonus Scene Chapter 4: Into Davao

  Bontoc and Ishihara crossed into Davao on the ninth day after the blinding of his mother.

  Sitting at his small camp, Bontoc watched as the jungle around him plunged into darkness. Sunset in the Philippines was a sudden and brutal affair. The jungle took on a different tone as the night hunters slipped out of their nests and lairs, eager for their dinners.

  Bontoc felt the same, and he opened his bag. He had strips of dried pork, and he chewed on them methodically, adding water when necessary to loosen the meat. Ishihara sat in the shadows cast by the flickering of the campfire, and after several minutes of silence he said, “How far will you pursue him?”

  Bontoc swallowed the pork in his mouth and replied, “Until I kill him.”

  Ishihara nodded.