by Victor Mahn
About the author
Victor Mahn is known for the writing of fictional horror that goes just beyond the edge, into the realms where the human imagination seems to take on other-worldly forms. He is relentless in the historical accuracy of the mainstay storyline and queries many facets of paranormal terrors. However, his steadfast ambition is to always entertain people.
the delirium of negation
Victor Mahn
the delirium of negation
Vanguard Press
VANGUARD EBOOK
© Copyright 2019
Victor Mahn
The right of Victor Mahn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All Rights Reserved
No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,
copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions
of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is
available from the British Library.
ISBN (PAPERBACK) 978 1 784654 84 9
Vanguard Press is an imprint of
Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd.
www.pegasuspublishers.com
First Published in 2019
Vanguard Press
Sheraton House Castle Park
Cambridge England
Printed & Bound in Great Britain
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my family and friends, for the journey was not only mine to make.
I dedicate this book to my wife, who is my relentless champion. And, more importantly, she always strives to make me a better person.
Part One
British Borneo – April 1945
CHAPTER ONE
The view he had locked on to did not reflect the emotions within, though he was being drenched in the cold dawn rain. He was seated on a grassy mound – and he was looking at a patch of grass that was taller than the others – the mound which he always came to whenever time was available. He was conscious of the droplets racing down his nose and cheeks. A firmness of the soul holds me through this war, yet I feel hollow now, Richard Darryl Atherton thought.
It is serene without, chaotic within.
Ricky Dee, as he was known around the company he was a part of, also observed the lack of wind this morning, something which had been evident every time it rained in this tropical jungle. It was almost like an omen, impending an oncoming disaster. This thought made things seem even more grim for Ricky Dee—he was also dubbed ‘Rickety’, due to his lanky frame and frail-looking face. This morning’s discovery was not helping this fact in any way.
He peered skyward, noted that the dark clouds were limited to about a radius of three miles from where he was. Beyond that, the clouds were white and thin. And he was able to recall the name of such clouds, which he found to be odd, given the circumstances – cirrocumulus. A blackish shape emerged from the corners of his vision. This early at dawn? Another ill omen. Rickety, who was from the countryside, had grown accustomed to seeing these Mitsubishi Zeros over the past few months. He had never seen an aeroplane prior to his posting to Borneo.
Rickety got up, cleared off the moist dirt from the seat of his pants and started down toward the infirmary where he was stationed. All medical personnel were revered in the war, and he was no exception to this rule. He knew that he would be guarded by a specific team of gunners (a colloquial term that the Australian companies used, referring to the infantry units) when out in the field (or war-zone). But the infirmary’s structure and condition did not reflect that reverence.
The initial infirmary had been grounded, meaning that the structure had been constructed to be firm, out of concrete, cement and such. Several weeks ago, a Japanese air raid had destroyed that structure, as the reports (severely delayed from HQ) pointed out that they were targeting the medical units. ‘By taking out the enemy’s means of healing the sick and the wounded, we are closer to victory’, the translated report they had intercepted had read. A major medical condition around the jungles of Malaya and Borneo is dysentery, and the mortality rates had been dropping steadily since the beginning of 1942. Three years later, the mortality rates were still low, though the reasons for this fact had changed.
The fit and able-bodies were then instructed to construct a makeshift infirmary, which doubled as a food storage facility. The idea was to make it appear as an ordinary depot from above, where the Zeros and Hiryus (codenamed Zeke and Peggy) dominated. This made the pilots uncertain as to the function of the structure. Sure, they may drop bombs on them anyway, but the provision of some amount of doubt could buy some time for the company. In a span of less than two months, they had moved the infirmary four times.
The camp was bordering Jesselton in British North Borneo, and everyone could easily spot Mount Kinabalu, the highest point in the island. Now the Jesselton Revolt is a chapter long forgotten and damned by the local communities. The massacre that the Japanese army carried out on the multi-ethnic resistance forces is legendary, albeit dark—the Suluk people had been tortured and systematically terminated. The placid mountain stands as a gross counterpoint to the current war affairs.
Rickety stood at the door of the infirmary. After a slight hesitation to venture through the door, he was awakened to find himself in the twelve-feet-by-twelve-feet structure. He found it weird that he could think of something amusing at this time, when he was tired and his mind dull. This place is rickety, but they call me that instead! Or did they call him that because he was the current Medical Officer of the 2/12th Field Ambulance of the Australian Army, and because he spent a great deal of his waking hours in the infirmary attending the wounded, running blood cultures and whatever a goddamned Medical Officer was supposed to be doing? Actually, he did not know up until a week ago that he was the only Medical Officer of the campaign to the north-east of Borneo. I am now a rare breed…
The infirmary was poorly furnished: a footstool in the far-right corner, a medical bench, a couple of shelves, a shoe rack, and in the middle of the room, a single-bed frame (severely rusted, due to continuous rain of late) with a hard mattress. On it was the bundle that had caused ‘mass hysteria of the simple-minded folks’, as the sergeant at the outpost of the camp described it. But Rickety knew that even the Sergeant would have felt terror upon beholding the bundle.
Thunder rumbled nearby. This enhanced the dejected state that Rickety was in. He noted the minutes rolling by as he stood motionless, the bundle about five feet away. Dejectedness now turned to disgust as he thought about the objective of war; especially the one he was in right now. The pointlessness of it, the deaths and sufferings.
Several years ago, when he had just celebrated his nineteenth birthday, he had read a science periodical which had outlined the triumphs of the then-physicists, in a new field of physics called quantum mechanics. Rickety was excited at the time he was alive in, and he had been contemplating pursuing research work in such a field. In the thirty years since the turn of the century, atoms had been broken down to their constituents, thanks to the rank of physicists like Thompson, Rutherford and Bohr. The effects of that had encouraged a new-age thinking of astronomy, chemistry, and biology—even medicine.
It was all pointless now. He just needed to survive the war and head home—everything else was secondary. On a positive note, however, Rickety had got
ten himself enrolled into medical school at the University of Sydney, though it seemed trivial right now (he was a first-year graduate student in the Sydney Medical School when he decided to get drafted into the Second Australian Imperial Force). He pursued studies in medicine after being advised to do so by his contemporaries; it being a more practical field of science that could be useful in the war.
Yet, he had lost almost all his childhood friends as he turned sixteen. He never heard from any of them. He attributed this to the fact that they were not scholastic at all. Most of the youngsters from his part of the countryside were very hands-on and outdoorsy – they liked to get into the mud and work things out as they went along. Rickety, however, had a sense of smartness that was antithetical to this. He was able to acknowledge that he was different from the others, though. He was a wolf, and they were sheep. He was not of the pack, and that entailed solitude. Pretty queer for a sixteen-year-old.
Moping, he gathered whatever strength he had left and stepped forward. At the edge of the bed there was a stack of the last bit of papers that could be written on. These were not suited for medical reporting, however, but one used what one could get one’s hands on. Rickety picked up the topmost, peering at the title of the form – Mobilisation Attestation Form, with the word Attestation somewhat faded, in pencil. He would use this form for reporting on the autopsy that he was about to carry out. It caused his stomach to turn when he thought that this would be the first time he was going to cut into an infant. A dead infant, he reminded himself. Another flutter of the stomach.
Steadily, he began unwrapping the bundle. The head was visible first, and he stopped. It did look repulsive, almost malevolent. But why was it so tiny? He could not tell for certain. But he did know it was related to bad genetics, passed on from either parent, or both. The eyes looked lidless and orange, with the facial skin tissue scaly like a that of a large fish. Another amusing thought: sturgeon is a large fish, and I am now acting surgeon. What is wrong with me?
There was a newly-sharpened pencil at the corner of the other end of the bed. He now scribbled on the second section of the form, as though in response to Question 2 (Where were you born?) – Congenital deformity present. A pause, then he corrected the second word he had jotted down to deformities. Next to that, in brackets, he wrote the exact medical condition he had observed, Harlequin-type ichthyosis.
He placed the pencil on the mattress and glanced at the face once again. The diagnosis for this condition could only be ascertained through a physical examination, such as the one he was carrying out right now. The infant would have been discarded by the parents, he ventured. How else could they have reacted? It looked nothing like a human—it was akin to something that arrived from space, with the odd-looking eyes, mouth, nose and overall physical structure. He noted that the creature – dare I call it that? – had most likely bled profusely during birth.
He wrote that down and added that dehydration and respiratory failure had probably taken place as well. But Rickety knew that these were not the cause of death. He had made a preliminary examination several hours ago (pre-dawn), when the infant was found at the camp’s southern entrance. This entrance faced the tropical jungle; the first grove of trees was less than a hundred metres away. It came from the jungle, one of the local wanderers announced. A third omen. The cloth that had been used to wrap the infant is of peculiar make, a fact that other infantrymen had pointed out—one of those who had dared to be associated with all this, that is.
Rickety became conscious that he was drenched, and that his wet hand had made the form he was writing on slightly damp in several spots. He cursed under his breath, thought about taking another form. Another pause. What does it all mean? He continued writing:
3. Are you a British Subject? - Evidence of clubfoot, cleft lip and some inherent stress to normal tissue.
4. What is your age and date of birth? - Age – Traces of polymelia are also apparent. [Hydra Syndrome].
Date of Birth – Premature birth; under-developed ears, with no physically formed earlobes.
Rigor mortis is fixed.
Rickety rolled his tired shoulders. He hadn’t measured the dimensions of the corpse – the corpse – he was getting used to it now. Nor had he weighed it.
Well, fuck. How can any being have this many physical deformities? It is not natural!
He knew that sooner or later he would need to incise and have a look at the internal structures and conditions. God knows what other horrors he would discover then.
There was a steady drumming on the roof of the infirmary—the rain had caused a steady drip from somewhere (possibly on a branch of a tree nearby?) to hit on the zinc roof. Sounds that had been pushed onto the back of his mind were now hastening forwards to his working consciousness. He was glad that he was distracted. Someone had mentioned that the birds and other forest critters had made no sound that morning. Was it one of the indigenous? Rickety wondered but could not be certain—too many things were happening that dawn anyway.
A thought whizzed through him, and he saw fit to write it down promptly:
5. (a) What is your normal trade or occupation? Grade, if any? - Possible links to the leper colony at Pulau Berhala (Berhala Island) – requires investigation.
Everyone in North East Borneo would have undoubtedly heard of the forested island off Sandakan Bay—that it was a quarantine zone for those suffering from leprosy. In fact, it had been such a zone before the war, and legal institutes and commissions did not question the merits of such objectives. Hell, we are too preoccupied with saving our own skins now! Rickety, and his fellow military men of the company knew of the perils and pitfalls of the war; notably in thick tropical jungles with its hundreds of predators and wildlife—not to mention the varied number of indigenous people who are rarely seen, but heard of.
I shall liaise with Annand on this. Yes. Yes! That is what I will do.
Rickety had one final line to jot down before he would grab the long-handed scalpel, saw and Hagedorn needle from the shelf, and commence the autopsy. He felt the ominous reality of what he was about to write. However, he also knew that it was the truth, and that that made it a whole lot worse to bear—the unnatural and ghastly abhorrence of the entire matter:
5. (b) Present occupation? – Multiple stab wounds apparent:
i. Stab wound on right side of chest—six inches from the top of the head, and vertically oriented; approximately half an inch in length.
ii. Stab wound on right flank—wound is diagonally oriented. Nine inches from the top of the head; approximately three-eighths of an inch in length.
iii. Stab wound on the upper-right chest—lateral border of right clavicle. Vertically oriented; approximately half an inch in length; also observe a tapered wound lining superiorly – suggesting that excessive force was used when pulling out the object used for stabbing.
iv. Stab wound on the right thigh—wound is traversely oriented; approximation of five inches from the right heel and half an inch from the back of the thigh.
NOTE: All these wounds present a small amount of fresh cutaneous haemorrhage.
He conjectured that it took him about thirty minutes to write this section—it was not a pleasant task, nor was it an easy one. It filled him with emotion. And pain.
The pain formed incessantly in his heart, and he felt like his chest would burst into flames because he knew a certain truth. He held the truth in his palms, but was unable, and unwilling, to ensconce it in his inflamed heart: this is a case of infanticide. Someone had killed this infant.
CHAPTER TWO
The capital of North Borneo was some three hundred and thirty kilometres from Jesselton, roughly translating to about two hundred and eighty kilometres from where Rickety’s camp was. Sandakan, which means, in the local Suluk language, ‘the place that had been pawned’, was unique and had a deep history. The British North Borneo Company had eloquently named it Elopura – beautiful town – though there had been dozens of uprisings by the local popul
ace, which ended in bloodshed.
The tribal groupings on the island were multifarious on this, the third largest island in the world. The tropical jungles were a couple of hundred million years old, and the greater part of the several hundred thousand square kilometres had not yet been explored by foot—aerial reconnaissance and geo-charting from hot-air balloons were the only forms of mapping that had been carried out thus far.
Of late, there had been reports (mostly hearsay with little evidence to support it) that the Japanese were moving into the interior of the island and were forcing more than a thousand prisoners of war to walk barefoot from the capital to a town in the western regions known as Ranau. They had to traverse the marshes and swamps of the North Borneo jungle. Camp 12 was just outside of the Ranau district.
Needless to say, when such preliminary reports had begun to appear in the campaign’s quarters, the effect on the already-dampened spirits of the soldiers was profound. One would have hoped that the rumours had been contrived, for whatever aim or intent, on falsehood. For how could the news (and rumours) of the tortures, humiliation and war-mongering be true? Is there no decency in the hearts of men? There shall be no elucidation for anyone engaged in war.
But now, as of this morning, Rickety had had to rework that in his mind—the equilibrium was now off. Way, way off… Obeisance to a nation—or even to an idea such as standing against communism, could demand a man to pull a trigger on another. There can be no such defining of the killing of an infant, however. And in such a rage? The data supporting that had been inferred from the morning’s autopsy. Rickety had been working on it up until three in the morning, with the assistance of a local tribesman, Limbuang.