by Dan Simmons
“How many?” I whispered back.
“How many?” repeated Mr. Clemens. “How many? I don’t know…about nine hundred eighty-seven thousand, six hundred thirty-one, I estimate.”
I stared in shock.
“I don’t know how many!” whispered Mr. Clemens in a loud tone. “A cotillion’s worth. Perhaps a regiment. I am not accustomed to counting ghosts. There are enough for several bridge games with ample left over for a jury.”
I made a face at his light tone at this serious juncture. “How do you know they are ghosts, Mr. Clemens? Simply because we were told to expect them here?”
The redheaded correspondent nodded, shrugged, and patted his bare chest as if searching nonexistent pockets for a cigar. “Yes, Miss Stewart,” he said, “that and the fact that they glow like St. Elmo’s Fire and I can see through them as if they were a thin broth. These are the primary clues, but I am no detective. They could be a Senate Committee in search of a quorum, but since they are naked, this seems improbable. I would put my money on ghosts.” I hesitated and Mr. Clemens may have mistaken the pause for fear, for he said, “Shall we go on? Or return to the surface?”
“We shall go on,” I said at once. Noticing the color high in Mr. Clemens’s cheeks, I added, “Do not distress yourself about our state of dishabille, sir. Our worthy progenitors, Eve and Adam, were comfortable enough in this state.”
Mr. Clemens made a soft, nasal noise and whispered, “This is true, Miss Stewart, and I am no biblical scholar, but I believe that Adam and Eve were on a first-name basis.”
“Shall we proceed, Mr. Clemens?”
The correspondent turned and held out his arm. I linked mine with his. Thus we entered the realm of Milu, as cordially and casually as two well-dressed San Franciscans entering a formal ball. Ghosts, it seemed, spent the afterlife doing much the same sort of thing that had preoccupied them during life. The cavern widened here and scores of glowing figures were visible, all Sandwich Island natives as far as we could tell; some were sleeping, many were gambling or playing the type of games we had seen being pursued with stones in the dirt of Hilo and lesser villages, others rolling coconuts to hit a post and paying each other off in bones, while some were eating—many of these gathered around a huge bowl of the purple paste the locals call poi—and still others were merely strolling, men with men, women with women, and the occasional couple looking as if they were courting in death much as they must have in life.
Mr. Clemens and I proceeded slowly, staying to ourselves.
While we could not approximate the transparent quality of these spirits, some quality of the kukui nut oil imparted a glow to us that was not dissimilar to the spectral glow of those ghosts around us. Several times a spirit separated himself or herself from some activity and seemed to glide toward us, as if to welcome us to this place, but when each spectral form came within olfactory range of the rancid oil, the ghost would turn quickly and make a face, as if to say, “What a bad-smelling ghost!” It was after these occasions that I noticed that while the spirits in this huge cavern seemed to be speaking to each other—their mouths opened and closed, their jaws moved, their expressions changed—there was no audible conversation, indeed, no sound of any sort except the wind through the many fissures and crevices running from this main chamber.
Mr. Clemens reached over, squeezed my upper arm, and nodded in the direction of a side cavern. As if to dispute my conclusion about the silence of this spectral realm, a huge pig—the boar must have weighed well over a thousand pounds—was sleeping at the entrance to this subsidiary cavern. The hog’s snoring was more than audible—indeed, the rasping and whistling of air rushing in and out of the creature’s cavernous snout had been much of the noise that I had taken for the wind through the cavern’s fissures.
Remembering the woman’s warning about not waking the hog, I was ready to tiptoe in the opposite direction, but Mr. Clemens pointed and nodded again.
Behind the hog, in a deep niche in the cavern wall, stood several glowing forms that—while naked as the others—were obviously not the spirits of natives. Most of the haole spirits were male, but I could see at least one elderly woman in the congregation…for in truth, a congregation it was. A four-foot extension of lava that was relatively flat on top was obviously being put to use as a pulpit, and several of the ghosts appeared to be vying for preaching time at it. An older, taller spirit must have been the Reverend Whister. The aged female in the listening crowd must have been his wife. There were other men; I tried to remember the details of the story at Volcano House—the taller of the young men might be August Stanton, the widow Stanton’s late husband. The other young man might be Mr. Taylor. I winced upon recalling that they had found Mr. Stanton all but drained of blood and Mr. Taylor’s demise had included having his head “fractured with the sound of a coconut being halved.” They looked none the worse for wear in their spirit form, although there was a certain abstract quality around the eyes that may or may not have been with them in life.
Mr. Clemens nodded again and I almost exclaimed aloud as I saw the next speaker at the pulpit. Reverend Haymark’s girth was as impressive unclothed as it had been beneath layers of missionary finery. Our former companion set his hands on the edges of the rock with the ease of someone familiar with the pulpit, leaned his weight forward, and began to mouth inaudible platitudes. The congregation listened with a certain zombie quality not uncommon in any Presbyterian church on a warm Sunday.
Mr. Clemens set his lips against my ear so that the noise of his whisper could not be heard even a few paces away. “How do we get him into the coconut?”
I shook my head. I had no idea how we were to get past the hog. Indeed, to gain access to the side cavern, one or both of us would have to step over the monster pig’s snout. The thought made me shudder.
As if reading my mind, my companion leaned against me once again and whispered, “You stay here. I will endeavor to reach Reverend Haymark.”
I answered by seizing Mr. Clemens’s upper arm and shaking my head rapidly. Already more of the spirits were wandering near, despite the stench of our drying oil, and the thought of standing there alone while these dead things brushed against me was not supportable.
Mr. Clemens nodded his understanding and we began our slow voyage past the snoring hog. The cavern floor was irregular under our feet and I felt a mounting terror at the thought of suddenly losing my balance and pitching over onto the bristled mass of the thing. At close inspection, the hog was even larger than I had thought from a distance; it must easily have weighed a ton. The thing was like a small elephant with a hog’s bristled hide and terrible head. As we reached the point where we would have to step over that head, I realized with a surge of vertigo that the sleeping beast had multiple eyelids…not two or four, but at least eight. I caught a glimpse of obsidian orbs beneath those lowered lids, and for a moment I was sure that the monster was only feigning sleep in order to draw us closer. Even as I lifted my bare foot to step over that snout, feeling the hideous, warm breath on my sole, my imagination supplied me with the sudden and certain image of those eyes snapping open, that mouth with its too-human teeth opening and then closing upon my ankle; I could hear the snap and rending of cartilage and bone as the hog swallowed my foot with a single gulp and then lifted that head the size of a barrel to devour the rest of my leg…
Mr. Clemens caught me before I fainted dead away. In my sudden vertigo, I had swooned toward the hog’s bristled back, and only the former riverboat pilot’s strong left arm held me upright. While we were clasped thusly, like two dancers in a slow pirouette, I regained my composure and then my balance.
We stepped over the hog and were in the deep niche in the cavern wall. If it awoke now—and I suddenly realized that a hog’s sense of smell was sensitive and that it would certainly be awakened by our stench—we would be trapped with the other haole ghosts. I remembered the Pele-woman’s comment that the hog would rape me and eat my hi-hi’o should I waken it. Once again my flesh
rippled with revulsion and my skin went cold with giddiness; once again, Mr. Clemens steadied me with a strong hand on my bare back. Such intimacies would have been unthinkable an hour earlier; now they were welcomed.
We moved through the small congregation of Christian spirits. We had come for our friend, Reverend Haymark, but the old lady in the hut had ordered us to remove all of the haole uhane from the cavern so that Pele might resume battle with her enemies. I looked at Mr. Clemens, but it was obvious that he had no more idea how to move these glowing forms from this spot than had I.
The problem was solved for us. The Christian spirits disliked our smell as much as the kanakas had, and they made a path for us. Mr. Clemens led the way to the pulpit, where Reverend Haymark’s ghost continued preaching to an unheeding audience. Our corpulent friend’s spirit made me think of an unsuccessful waxwork imitation of the living man I had known. His mouth moved soundlessly until Mr. Clemens touched the spirit’s arm. Immediately, Reverend Haymark’s uhane turned as if summoned and stepped down from the makeshift pulpit, following Mr. Clemens as the correspondent threaded his way back through the crowd.
I tried this technique. It worked well. A mere touch on the arm of our kindred ghosts worked like a silent summons. The first time I touched one—the woman, Mrs. Whister, I presumed—I drew my hand back quickly. The spirit’s arm was no more substantial than a breeze—a chilly breeze. But she turned obediently and followed me toward the hog’s snout and freedom.
Half a dozen touches and the haole spirits followed us like goslings behind a mother goose. Mr. Clemens led the way, pausing only briefly before lifting his bare leg over the snoring pig’s snout. For a second I feared that Reverend Haymark’s ectoplasmic feet would wake the hog, but then I noticed that none of the spirits actually touched the ground as they walked.
When it was my turn to again pass the sleeping pig, I felt my heart pounding so loudly that I was sure the monster would hear it and wake. But I summoned my courage and once again lifted my leg over the ugly snout. I could see the creature’s teeth now—huge, sharp, glistening. A small puddle of drool moistened the cavern floor where the monster slept.
I passed without incident. The following spirits did not even glance at the hog as they floated after me. I wondered what I would do if these ghosts spent the rest of eternity following me around. As we moved further toward the mouth of the cavern, Reverend Haymark and the other ghosts floating like tethered balloons in our wake, I decided that I would deal with that problem when faced with it in the outside world.
Some of the other ghosts followed our procession out of some sort of spectral curiosity. There was no cry or alarm sounded; indeed, there was no sound at all save for the monster pig’s rasping breathing—a sound which receded but never disappeared no matter how far we traveled down the lava tube.
Most of the native spirits had turned back before we reached the base of our entrance fissure, but one—a handsome young man with blank eyes—continued to follow. I suddenly was certain that this was the loyal but hapless native named Kaluna whom the Reverend Whister had murdered by accident when the boy had lifted his knife to take an oath. It did not matter. The old woman had not told us to take any native spirits with us when we left, and, in truth, the young man’s uhane did not try to follow as we left the fissure.
Mr. Clemens leaned close and whispered, “I will have to climb first and then lift you out.”
The thought of being alone in the near-darkness with these glowing, mindless things did not please me, but I bit my lip and nodded agreement. Before climbing, however, Mr. Clemens did an incredible thing. Unstoppering the coconut shell the young woman had given him, he held it against the ectoplasmic persona of Reverend Haymark and began shoving and twisting the yielding specter. Incredibly, the shape of our former companion began flowing into the coconut like fog through a keyhole. Mr. Clemens worked harder, palpatating the cloudy remnants of the cleric into malleable forms to squeeze through the tiny opening. It was hard work—as Mr. Clemens said later—rather like folding a large sail into a small valise.
It—he—eventually folded. Mr. Clemens squeezed in the last ectoplasmic protuberance of the missionary, stoppered the coconut, and began to climb the vine.
“What of these?” I whispered urgently, gesturing toward the sightless congregation of the elder Reverend Whister, his staring wife, his vacant-eyed son-in-law, Mr. Stanton, the vacuous Mr. Taylor, and one or two others whose stories we did not know.
Mr. Clemens leaned back from the vine and whispered, “We had best leave them to get out as best they can. I think they have no bodies to return to, so they are on their own. From what the old woman said, they are lapus, ghosts of the dead, rather than a kidnapped hi-hi’o spirit of the living, such as our friend.” He panted slightly, holding himself nearly horizontal from the cave wall while hanging from the vine. I realized with a shock that I was growing accustomed to Mr. Clemens’s naked presence. “Also,” he said, returning his attention to the climb, “I don’t think there’s any more room in the coconut.”
Mr. Clemens leveraged himself higher, out of sight. For the moment, I was alone with the glowing spirits who had followed me there, including the native Kaluna whose sad face registered the only emotion I had seen in the Ghost Kingdom of Milu.
Suddenly my pulse galloped and I whirled as if something had moved in the shadows. Images of Pana-ewa leapt to mind, but there was no lizard or creature of night and fog there in the lava tube.
It took me a second to realize that what had startled me was not a sudden presence but an absence.
The hog had stopped snoring.
Cordie heard the helicopter before she saw it. Then it came in once over the Big Hale, searchlight stabbing down over the palm trees and winking twice as if in hello to her, before the throbbing rotors passed overhead and the moving shape was lost to sight in the night.
Cordie knew Nell’s plan. She knew that unless the old woman on the mountain had dissuaded her, Eleanor would be planning to descend into the Underworld to lead the haole spirits out so that once again Pele could battle her enemies without fear of hostages. Cordie also knew that Nell would have been working to persuade that jerk of an art curator to go into the cave with her—assuming that the old rule of one man and one woman to lead the spirits out was somehow still in effect.
Cordie did not care about the plan. She did not care about saving the Mauna Pele Resort or the ghosts of the missing guests or any of it. She just wanted to get her friend Nell and herself out of this alive. With a growing chill, Cordie Stumpf realized that she would have to go to the heliport to warn Nell and Paul about the things abroad in the night…but to get to the heliport meant braving the dark and exposing herself to the things abroad in the night.
“Shit,” said the little woman. She tugged her straw bag over her shoulder, checked to make sure that everything she needed was in it, and slipped the lock on the door.
The sixth-floor mezzanine was dark. She could hear laughter and music from the Trumbo party one flight up, but everything below the penthouse level was darkness and subtle sounds. Cordie was sure that the guest elevator was out of action, which meant six flights down on one of the stairways at either the east or west end of the Big Hale. The stairways were open to the night air, which should help, but the only illumination was from the lanterns and lights above and the hellish glow from the volcano to the east.
Enough to see giant pigs by, I guess, thought Cordie. She held the pistol in her right hand and locked the door to her suite behind her. She took four steps, frowned, and leaned against the railing to the central courtyard while she removed her sturdy shoes and dropped them in her tote bag. Her socks made almost no noise on the tile. Better, she thought.
Cordie moved quickly toward the stairway.
Eleanor barely remembered the last of the helicopter ride, so confused were her thoughts and emotions. The pilot seemed concerned about the whereabouts of Molly Kewalu, and Eleanor’s repeated assurances that the cave ha
d been empty did not seem to satisfy him. Paul’s silence from the backseat spoke volumes of skepticism.
They circled in from the sea to approach the Mauna Pele. “Lights are out,” said Mike, throwing a toggle on the console that stabbed a searchlight beam down into the night. Eleanor saw dark hales, the empty beach, an abandoned Shipwreck Bar, and garden foliage whipping in the rising wind.
“I don’t know about leaving you here,” Mike said as they approached the darkened heliport. “It doesn’t look like they’ve even bothered to turn the backup generators on.” They hovered while the pilot looked first at Eleanor and then at Paul Kukali in the backseat. “They’ll probably order an evacuation in the morning anyway. Why don’t I drop you at Kona on my way north?”
“We’ll be all right,” said Paul. The curator’s voice was tired.
“I don’t know,” said Mike. “You saw that new fissure on the way down. There’s an active geyser not three miles from here and God knows what’s happening in those lava tubes.”
“We’ll be all right,” Paul said again.
Mike hesitated another moment and then brought the helicopter down, using the searchlight to illuminate the empty landing area. The winds buffeted the little machine and Eleanor realized what skill it must be taking to land as smoothly as they did. When they were on the ground, Eleanor reached across and squeezed the pilot’s hand where it rested on the control stick. “Thank you,” she said. “This ride was very important. I will never forget it.”
Mike looked at her and nodded, but there were unasked questions in those startling gray eyes.
“Will you have problems getting back to Maui?” asked Paul.
Mike shook his head and tapped his earphones. “The tower at Keahole is telling me that I have almost half an hour before the real storm sweeps in. Time enough to get north of it and make the crossing.” He smiled at Eleanor. “The kids will have eaten, but Kate always waits to eat with me. Well, good luck, guys.”
