The scientist glanced at Miss James but saw his attempt at humor had gone unnoticed, so he said, “I am no expert in tropical diseases or insect bites.”
“Might those ‘wounds’ be the result of an infection—boils, perhaps?” the governess suggested.
“An excellent theory, Miss James, but they do not resemble lesions denoting any malignancy of the blood,” he said, shaking his head. “No, we have here a pair of simple round holes directly over the jugular vein suggestive of an animal bite.”
He pulled the covers back over the girl and said huskily, “If she will not take water then the only treatment I could suggest would be a blood transfusion, but I have no instruments, and I have looked through our supplies. There is nothing with which we could attempt it.”
“But if her appearance is improving...” the governess’ eyes welled up. “Might her overall condition?”
“We can hope, but her pulse is fluctuating wildly, and she will take no fluid despite the heat. Since we cannot identify her affliction, it is impossible to gauge her actual state,” Van Resen said, grasping Miss James’ soft hands and holding them over young Lilly’s heart that lay between them. “We must make every effort to give her water, food...and all the love in our hearts. We must never underestimate the power of that emotion.”
The governess wiped at her tears with one hand.
“Come now.” He drew her away from the bed and pushed the hanging partition aside. Van Resen gave Phillip Holmes a look and the younger man sullenly vacated the large armchair in which he bade Miss James sit. “We have worked our brains to exhaustion.”
The governess smiled weakly as she took a cup of tea from Mrs. Quarrie, grasped her welcoming hand, and the women sat for a time in silent communion. The older woman was beside herself at her granddaughter’s declining health, so Miss James’ safe return had been some evidence that their prayers might find answer.
The scientist left Miss James and walked to the table where he set a palm against the journal that had belonged to the yurt’s previous owner. He had had little luck with it, other than determining that it was a record of events, and for a moment, Van Resen frowned as he considered the castaways’ situation to be like a puzzle. Despite its many mysterious elements, he knew that like all puzzles, it was only a matter of time before the proper pieces fit into place.
Though it looked like an unsolvable jumble at the moment.
“Care must be taken when formulating theories that fatigue does not weaken one’s reason, and open the door to emotional excess. While instinct is integral to the creation of a hypothesis, always it must be subordinate to science,” Dr. Van Resen said, pouring a cup of tea for himself.
He drew in a hissing breath as he continued, “That is to say, an open mind is essential to finding the truth, while sane and sober thought is required to judge it.
“A case in point is a man of letters I knew in Amsterdam. A well-regarded doctor, philosopher and metaphysian who lived by this supposition, but allowed his imagination to run wild while attempting to formulate a diagnosis for a female patient who was suffering from a low red blood cell count, or anemia—and exhibited marks similar to those we see upon Lilly’s throat.”
“Was it the same affliction?” the governess gasped, shifting forward in her chair.
“I will forgo the repetition of my earlier caution about ‘emotional excess,’ and suggest it is that very similarity that has kept me from voicing this narrative until now,” Van Resen warned. “This doctor found no other distinguishable cause for his patient’s illness, and for some reason, perhaps it was his slavish devotion to having an open mind, but among this intelligent fellow’s conjectures he irresponsibly entered nosferatu as a possible cause of the illness.
“True, there were many provocative circumstances surrounding the case, but for him to allow such a hypothesis when there are so many diseases and infections in the world that could have caused the malady...” Van Resen’s shoulders slumped. “It always puzzled me that he should take that tack.”
“What is nosferatu?” asked Mrs. Quarrie.
“You will laugh,” Van Resen said, coloring slightly. “One must remember, a mind like his was powerful, as was his imagination, and being human he was open to suggestion. I have long thought the entire incident was a case of mass hysteria—for others witnessed strange events, also.” He walked over to lean against the mantelpiece. “The betrothed of the patient’s dearest friend had just returned after time in the old country. His experiences there and the testimony of superstitious locals had convinced him of a legend.” Van Resen shrugged. “He then persuaded his friend and the doctor to this belief.”
“Of what?” Mr. Quarrie piped up. “What is this nosferatu?”
“A myth,” Van Resen answered, and laughed. “That I believe was responsible for a misdiagnosis in that situation that eventually led to a young woman’s death, and that drew considerable negative attention to her doctor’s career thereafter.” He smiled without humor. “Attention that I do not intend to bring upon my own.” He grimaced. “No. I am still determined to be rescued and see civilization again, so I will need my reputation intact when I return.”
He saw that he had disappointed his listeners. “I only use that doctor’s story as an example to show that while an open mind is required when confronted with any problem, be the puzzle medical or scientific in nature, it is wise to use logic and truth to bar the door to superstition.”
“I wish you’d had a more encouraging tale to tell,” Mr. Quarrie said, where he stood by his wife rubbing her shoulder. The woman was pale, and the skin around her eyes appeared darker.
“You knew this other doctor?” Miss James asked. She had also blanched during the story.
“Intimately,” Van Resen said, hesitating a moment. “Or so I thought...” Then he perked up. “I believe his brilliance was flawed by his Catholicism. To be a scientist of renown at the beginning of the 20th century, arguably one of the most pivotal times in scientific history, and to hold to such primitive dogma as Creation? Mein Gott! as he would say... Creation?”
“Really, Dr. Van Resen!” Mrs. Quarrie sighed, face flushing. “Now the church! There is no end to your provocations.”
“We need answers,” Phillip Holmes rasped, “and all he gives is riddles!” The young man did not notice the annoyed look his comment received from all in attendance.
“I do not say this to provoke anything but rational thought, for such a thing is needed at this time,” Van Resen answered harshly. “Young Lilly requires a scientific answer, not Creation, salvation—Heaven or Hell. I illustrate the danger that caused this scientific mastermind, of which I speak, to lose his footing.” The scientist’s voice raised in pitch. “When he should have been prescribing hemoglobin he treated his patient for hobgoblins!”
“Please, Dr. Van Resen,” Mr. Quarrie grumbled, walking toward the scientist like he would block his wife from the man’s words. “Is there not some more rational direction to steer our conversation.”
“Indeed there is,” Van Resen said, tipping his head to Miss James. “Perhaps, the good governess would tell us of her incredible time in the jungle, and of the remarkable man who saved her, and who is now in the process of finding our friends Captain Seward and Jacob Raines.”
Miss James raised her eyes to Van Resen, a haunted look clouding her features.
Phillip Holmes’ shoulders squared and his eyes beamed eagerly while the Quarries looked on sadly.
“If you would be so kind,” the scientist said, bowing formally.
Virginia spoke quietly of her rescue at the hands of her “forest angel” as her fellow castaways listened spellbound. Mrs. Quarrie sat in one chair, while her husband took the seat beside her. Phillip Holmes leaned against the table, and Van Resen stood with one elbow hooked over the mantelpiece.
The governess blushed as she spoke of Gazda’s battle against a monstrous, misshapen beast, and colored further when she described the rustic sanctuary he had fou
nd for her, where he “tended to her every need...”
According to Miss James the man had super-human powers, and was capable of unbelievable feats of strength and agility.
At one point Phillip Holmes and Mrs. Quarrie had asked about the sleeping arrangements within the jungle bower, but the governess reddened and turned the conversation in another direction.
To push past the query or explain her actions, Miss James spoke of the irresistible intelligence in the man’s eyes, and his apparent ability to know her thoughts and learn her language at incredible speed.
As she chattered, Van Resen slowly moved toward the door and opened it muttering something about “a breeze.” He lingered there looking out.
From that position, he could see across the clearing to where the dark moringa grove stood against the green jungle; its many shadows leeching into the long grass.
“One rushes to understand,” he said, turning to look at the governess as her tale came to an end. “Your friend Gazda, the forest angel, wore a medallion of some interest to me.”
Van Resen reached down and picked up the curved sword that they had set by the door. He walked over to the table and touched the abandoned journal’s leather cover with its tip.
“The entries in this were made in an unknown language, yet the runic symbols and annotations resemble the Hungarian tongue.” He held the sword up. “And here a Cossack’s blade.”
“This cabin—this yurt, was fashioned after dwellings built by nomadic peoples who live in Eastern Europe and Mongolia. All of these elements indicate that its builder and occupant came to Africa from somewhere in those lands. He came here, yet willfully remembered what he left behind.”
Gesturing with the sword he turned about in the room. “There the fine fireplace, and here across from it a wall of trophies. Memories of a greater life that was lost as would be the case if the previous inhabitant was a castaway like ourselves, but I ask you, my friends, who else goes far from home, and is forced to have only memories to replay?”
“Travelers?” Mr. Quarrie shouted, before his wife cried: “Soldiers...”
“Excellent!” Van Resen said. “Though I am thinking something else. The diary, the mementos and these reconstructions. It is evidence of someone trying to remember a place he did not want to leave.” The scientist opened the journal to the first page and pointed at the date. “From the very day of departure did he mark his time away...until the entries ended 18 years ago.”
Van Resen’s gaze slid from one pair of expectant eyes to the next as he looked around the room. “If he was not a castaway, I believe the previous owner may well have been an exile.”
“An exile?” Miss James blurted.
“Exile is a punishment rewarded to those with opposing loyalties in a war, to failed princes and kings—and to criminals,” Van Resen said evenly. “The man whose bones we found did not leave his homeland by choice.”
“How can you know?” the governess asked.
“I cannot know with certainty,” the scientist said. “But this situation preys upon my mind, and I am angered that I have not the facility to research the problem sufficiently.” He laughed dryly, his voice a rasp. “And as this plays upon my memory, it brings to mind the doctor that I spoke of, and the peculiarities of his character...half a world away!”
“What of Gazda’s medallion?” Miss James asked.
“Gazda is a white man of exceptional abilities who indicates by his actions that he has long lived in the wilds of Africa,” Van Resen said, before looking up at the ceiling. “How did he get here to a place where there are no native people of that race?”
“You think this yurt is his home?” Mr. Quarrie said.
“He covered himself with animal hide similar to those skins we found here,” the scientist said. “And his possessions, the knife and medallion, even the arm bands and anklets that he wears, he may have scavenged from this building or from its former occupant.” Van Resen thought of the remains they’d found inside the yurt. Just skull and bones with worn and rotten clothing that had offered little to indicate a place in society above the level of servant.
“What then, doctor?” Miss James asked, half-rising from her chair.
“It is a mystery, and solving it might tell us the true nature of Lilly’s illness,” Van Resen said, digging into his breast pocket for his cigar case. “I shall smoke and think now.”
He saw Mr. Quarrie begin to rise, so raised his hand.
“Please sir, if I might have your esteemed company at another time. I would like to be alone with my thoughts.” The scientist moved toward the open door, his pant legs and shoes turning orange in the light that angled through. “The sun is near to setting. I will not be long.”
CHAPTER 25 – Dark Discovery
Once outside the yurt, Van Resen stood before it to watch the lowering sun send rays dappling through the distant trees that grew between the clearing and the sea.
He held the cigar clamped in his mouth but set no flame to it. Rather his eyes were drawn to the shadows that haunted the roots of the dark moringa grove. They formed a blot on the landscape seeming almost to absorb what light remained in the day.
So it seemed, but such a thing could not be true. The eyes played tricks when subjected to natural phenomena and stress.
Steeling his nerve, Van Resen slipped the cigar away and withdrew the butcher knife from his coat pocket before climbing down the ladder to cross the grass to the southwest.
As he moved toward the brooding stand of moringa, Van Resen felt a chill despite the tropical heat that filled the clearing. This effect was accentuated by another trick of the eye for the gently waving grasses gave the shadowy, somewhat murky air that hung about the tumorous tree trunks the illusion of moving outward as a fog might drift on a cool, calming lake.
So it seemed to the scientist’s reluctant gaze that the darkness was flowing out to meet him. Of course, he knew this was improbable, though several adjustments of his eyeglasses only muddied the waters when he could perceive no explanation for the illusion.
Remarkably, as his foot first entered the misty shadow cast some ten feet to the east of the moringa grove, a spike of cold shot up his leg—and in response, his fingers ached with the same numbing tingle he’d felt when touching the wild man’s medallion.
In fact, he pictured its graven face at that very moment, and for a minute afterward, he cautiously scrutinized the ground ahead, fearful of treading on a snake.
“Imagination,” he scolded himself, holding the butcher knife out before him on the right. “And exhaustion.” Indeed, he had managed only a little sleep for the duration of his time upon the African shore.
But the cold dank stench that reached out of the trees was no mirage. The fetid odor repulsed his senses like the smell of rotten flesh, causing him to rub and chafe his whiskers with his free hand.
Van Resen saw a subtle shifting of light between the trees, the rays of which had not descended through the grove’s greasy branches, but rather seemed to reflect upward, as light might from a lantern held above a pond at night.
So convincing was this effect, that he continued to glance down at his feet to catch these glimmerings as he crossed out of the long green grass that abounded in the clearing, and onto the dried and blackened tufts of undergrowth that followed the earth’s rising contour until the ground was lost beneath a twisted mat of moringa roots.
Deeper he traveled between the trunks until he stood fully surrounded in the tight arboreal maze, where with some dismay he did look down to see the light replaced by murky shadow that had condensed and like a black fog drifted around his feet with the wafting haze sometimes rising to his knees.
So enclosed by trees and darkness, he was aware of a ringing depth and ambiguity of space that trembled with subterranean echoes and reflections of watery sound, all while in his ears came a rising, high-pitched whine reminiscent of cicadas.
His pulse surged suddenly as he stood in place until the annoying peal rea
ched its height and there he gasped with thrilling nerves, for the shadows before him obliterated the forest, and became a mirror to his thoughts.
Thoughts he could see of Lilly Quarrie, and Virginia James. Beautiful they were depicted on this ebon, dream-like canvas. Beautiful despite the age difference—but Van Resen was a man was he not?
Why would they deny him?
“Steady, Joseph,” the scientist muttered thickly, his nostrils flaring at a scent of perfume—of flesh and blood, of woman.
He remembered the smooth skin on young Lilly’s neck, and the harsh red wounds that marred it, but he felt no revulsion at the injury. Rather, he found his passions rising for the girl and the scarlet holes nestled there beneath her chin.
These dark desires were wrong—he was her doctor, and yet the yearning swelled within him. It rose as the black fog climbed his legs, and caressed the knife gripped in his hand.
And with this obscuring dark came red fantasies. Fantasies where blood spurted from the wounds on Lilly’s neck, and washed down over her naked breasts.
Breasts he wished to touch...
She was not yet 20, but the scientist understood how girls matured faster than men—a well-known fact.
Lilly was old enough to take a man for a mate! Had she not already? The body beneath her nightclothes was ripe; it was perfection. Yes, he’d taken a peek, a lingering look, really—what man would not?
And Van Resen was a man.
More of a man than Phillip Holmes! That young whelp deserved a beating—and why stop there? He slashed the air with his butcher knife. A spoiled little mama’s boy! How dare he...
But Van Resen was a man! A perfect man for Lilly—and for that haughty governess too! How he had yearned to take them both, take them and lie with breasts in hand, in his mouth, as he stroked their flaring hips!
Van Resen shuddered as the fog rose higher still, and washed over his tingling thighs.
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