“You consented to this?” said Billy.
She nodded, not looking at him.
“Christina, you know something of white ways. You know what you have been taught. This Tadamona—why, he is nothing but airy mist. He is a superstition born out of typhoons and sickness and the minds of men who know little. Tadamona does not exist except in your imagination, and your death could do nothing to drive off this plague. You would only add another gravestone in the cemetery, and all the village would weep for you when the disease went on unabated.” And as she did not seem to be listening, he raised his voice with sudden fury. “You fools! Your island god doesn’t live! He never did live, and he never will! Give me this week and I’ll stop this plague! Obey my orders and it will take no more of your people! Tadamona! Damn such a rotten idea!”
They stared at him with shocked attitudes, then glanced uneasily out into the darkness.
“You must not speak so,” said Christina in a hushed voice. “He . . . he will come for you.”
“How can he come for me if he doesn’t exist?” cried Billy.
“You have seen the footprints in the rock,” said Wanoa.
“A trick of lava!” shouted Billy. “No man or god has feet ten feet long!”
“You have heard him grumbling in the caverns of the point,” said Wanoa.
“A trick of the sea in hollow coral!”
“You have seen where he has torn up palms by the roots,” persisted Wanoa.
“They were ready to fall at the slightest breeze. I tell you, you can’t do this! Tadamona is in your heads, and only in your heads, do you understand? If he lives, why haven’t I seen him? Why?”
“He is too cunning for that,” said Wanoa. “And to see him, to look him full in the face, is to die. Those of our people who have seen him have been found dead, unmarked, in the streets. The wise ones here never stir about after midnight.”
“Bah! If he exists let him come and show himself to me! Let him walk up that path and call on me!”
They shrank back away from him as though expecting him to fall dead on the instant. Even Christina moved until his hand fell from her arm.
He was tired again. He felt so very alone and so small. “You can’t do this, Christina. Give me a week and I’ll stop this plague. I promise it. If I do not, then do what you like. But give me that.”
“More people will die,” said Christina. “I am not afraid.”
“It is the white blood in her,” said Wanoa. “It will quiet Tadamona. In a week, we will lose many, many more.”
Billy walked up and down the grass mat for minutes. He was weary unto death himself, and these insistent voices bored like awls into his skull. Again he flared:
“So a week is too much to give me?”
“You have had a week,” said Wanoa impassively.
Billy faced them, his small face flushed under the flickering hurricane lantern, the wind from the sea stirring his silky blond hair. For the moment he filled his narrow jacket completely. “Yes, damn you, I’ve had a week! A week obstructed by your yap-yap-yap about Tadamona. If a week is too much, how many days?”
“One day,” said Wanoa. “Not many people die in one day.”
“One day?” cried Billy. “What— All right,” he said, jacket emptying again. “One day. And when that is through I suppose . . .” He glanced at Christina and saw that she would hold to her word then.
Wanoa made a motion for the others to leave, and then he walked slowly after them down the path to the beach. Once Christina stopped and glanced toward the house, and Billy, seeing her, looked up into the sky as though help could be found there.
“One day,” he muttered to himself. “A lot of chance I have to stop that in one day. They’re fools. They’re all fools. Tadamona! By God, if I could get my hands on him once . . .” And then, stumbling toward his bedroom, he stopped and laughed shakily. “If I don’t watch myself, I’ll be believing it too.”
Osea, seeing and hearing nothing, lay on the couch. Billy covered him against the evening chill and then, finding no reason to maintain his vigil, dropped under the mosquito netting of his own bunk fully clothed. Presently he slept.
Tadamona, God of Jungle. Ageless as thought itself. Tadamona, seventy-five feet from toe to crown, with the face of a shark and the deadliness of the barracuda. Tadamona, childishly simple and childishly cruel. Jealous he had once been even of his own son and before such wrath the son had fled, leaving Tadamona to bring ill luck to Kaisan in all his lonely majesty. Tadamona had left his footprints in cold lava that men might see his size. Great five-toed prints, measuring ten feet, having every swirl and arch. One gazed upon Tadamona and sickened and died. One forgot to placate him and the typhoons came. One neglected to offer him fish and the next time at sea the banca sank, its owner never to be seen again.
And out on the long point, whose sheer cliffs disdainfully reared high above the long Pacific swell, there was a monstrous cave, a full hundred feet from floor to roof, a thousand feet from entrance to entrance. Men said it was there. No man had courage enough to make certain.
Tadamona, the awful and fearsome god of Kaisan, walked beside the sea that night, dwarfing the royal palms at his sides, stepping on and crushing native bancas, too small to be noticed.
And Billy Newman slept uneasily and dreamed awful things, hearing in the deepest of his slumber the hoarse breathing of Osea, the boy who would no longer trot so happily upon his fellah mahstah’s heels.
The moon had ridden down the sky, masked by the frightened clouds which fitfully blocked its light. The palm fronds rattled together like old bones in a weird, unholy dance. The shifting shadow patterns changed upon the verandah. Billy Newman stirred restively.
He did not know what woke him. But he was awake and one hand was clutched around the clammy butt of his automatic and his gaze was riveted upon the window, seen thinly through the mosquito netting.
He waited, hardly daring to breathe. He could see nothing—yet. He could hear nothing—yet. But he knew, without knowing how he knew, that something moved out there in the moonlight—something ominous and horrible.
He could hear nothing—yet. But he knew, without knowing how he knew, that something moved out there in the moonlight—something ominous and horrible.
At last he saw a shadow sweep across his floor. He tightened his grip on the gun. The shadow was as tall as a man and it moved without the slightest sound. Billy raised his gun, feverishly telling himself that this was some vengeful Chamorro come to settle a fancied score.
The mosquito net quivered uncertainly, plucked by a fumbling hand. Billy, inside the glowing white of it, felt as though he lay in his coffin.
The end of the net raised slowly, still uncertainly, as an elephant might push it out of the way with his trunk. The shadow Billy Newman had seen was now over him, too high over him to be a man. And now thick stumps like fingers, each one as tall as a man in itself, slid under the net and groped. Billy recoiled from the chill touch, as though they were snakes. The movement brought him to himself. The automatic in his hand he jammed straight into the horny flesh. With the rapidity of hysteria he pulled the trigger and seven thundering flashes lit the room.
The hand flinched a very little and then, with savage, crushing strength, fastened upon Billy. The net was ripped away. The hand withdrew, banging Billy against the sill.
His staring eyes took in a horrible sight. A grotesque face with seven rows of teeth hovered over him, weirdly haloed by the moon. The thing got to its feet, crushing down a royal palm. Billy, inverted, stared at the earth far below, at his house which was suddenly so small.
The thing marched soundlessly down the beach, heading for the point which went out to meet the sea.
The world began to spin for Billy. He was quivering and sick, overcome by
the awful stench of this thing and by the height and the doubt as to his fate. The automatic spun around his nerveless finger and dropped down to the beach. The last thing his eyes saw, as they rolled sickly into his head, was the thing sucking upon its injured finger, much as a man removes small splinters from his flesh.
After that Billy closed his eyes and fought the terror which surged up to engulf his reason. He knew now why men died when they saw this thing. It would be so easy to lie inert and let his own life ebb. It would be a relief to die.
Minutes later, the shock of a short fall brought him to himself. He crouched instantly, staring about him, conscious, at first, only of shadowy shapes which loomed in a crimson haze. Then his glance rose, up and up, and he again found Tadamona, seated down upon a giant boulder and backed by the soaring height of the cavern. The rows of teeth in that shark face gleamed redly in the eerie light, and the hands upheld the head in an attitude of consideration.
Billy flashed his glance around the place to discover an exit. There were two, but long before he could hope to reach them this thing would stop him. He sank back, only to tense again on the discovery that he was thirty feet from the floor, precariously perched on a narrow ledge of coral.
A low, muttering sound came to him and mystified him until he reasoned that it was the surf beating through the hollow point. A smell of decay saturated the air about him and he traced it to piles of fish bones scattered all around.
He peered down and, then, between the thing’s huge feet, he found the source of the light, a glowing, bubbling pool of molten stuff which sent up sulfurous vapors to wreathe the awful shape.
Tadamona was studying him. The lidless eyes were filled more with curiosity than anything else, but the glance could have been likened to the gaze of a beast interested in its soon-to-be-devoured prey.
It had not occurred to Billy that this thing might be able to speak, and when it did he was so startled that it took seconds for the gist of the words to sink through his terror.
“You are the white fellah mahstah,” said Tadamona, his voice making the cave shiver in echo. His words were ancient Chamorro and Billy understood them well.
“You are the white fellah mahstah,” repeated Tadamona. “Tonight, I am told, you said that you did not believe in god or devil. Tonight, they say, you sent word for me to come if I lived at all. Tonight, they say, you boasted that you were greater than all old gods.”
Billy was fighting for calmness.
“You say you stop the sickness,” continued Tadamona. “Perhaps you can also stop the storms, cast down the forests and raise them anew. But I see no great man. I see a weak fellah mahstah no bigger than a child. I see a man full of empty boasting and no reverence for the old gods.”
“What are you . . . going to do with me?” said Billy.
“It is that I am thinking about,” replied Tadamona. “You must be quiet.” Again he clasped his chin in a mammoth hand and regarded his game. Thought was so foreign to that sluggish brain that one could almost see the slow chain of reason progress.
At last he said, “I am going to kill you. You have said that you have power greater than mine. If you have such power, you would have shown it before now, therefore you lie. You have boasted and your boasts are all lies and so I am going to kill you.”
Billy tried to buck up. “You are going to kill me because you are afraid of me.”
The effect was sudden and savage. Tadamona almost shook down the cave with his thunder. “Afraid? Afraid of you—more of a child than a man? Afraid?” And then his rage went swiftly into laughter and again the cave rocked as he sent forth peal after peal, holding his quaking sides. Finally he again grew calm. The laugh had been humorless for all the display, and the sound of it had driven Billy into dull fury.
“I am afraid of you?” said Tadamona. “I, who have ruled jungle and sea for as many years as the world is old? You come, you say you are a god, you say you can stop my sicknesses in one day. . . . You have lied and so you will die—”
“I tell you,” howled Billy, “you are afraid. If you thought me less dangerous, you would not bother with me. When the people know that you took me and killed me, they will know, too, that you did it out of jealousy and fear. I have told them that I would stop the sickness—”
“An empty boast, white fool. You are weak. You are nothing.”
“I am strong enough to make you afraid. You are the coward. Where is your power over sickness? You have none. Where is your power over storm? That, too, is a lie. You are the liar and the boaster, not I. Else you would not have to kill me to show your superiority over me!”
Billy was beginning to gather his wits. It mattered little what he did or said. He could make his own position no worse. “Already you understand that you lie,” he cried into the thing’s face. “The Chamorro, when he sees you, falls down in death. I am still alive. Only looking on you can never kill me. My medicine and my magic are stronger than yours.”
Tadamona again stared thoughtfully at him, and then reached out a tree trunk of a finger and stirred him up experimentally, almost knocking him from the ledge. The effort Billy made to keep his hold amused the brute and put him into a better frame of mind.
“You have greater magic than mine,” he mocked. “You shriek in terror that I am afraid of you. You are funny. The people think you are a great man. You have told them that you are greater than I am. Very well, white fellah mahstah, there you see the entrance to this place. You will go. You will return to the house from which I took you. Shortly I shall bring my sickness. I shall bring my storm. When I have finished, neither man nor tree shall stand aright upon this island. Nothing will live. And before they die, they will know that you lied. Go.”
Billy stood in astonishment.
“Go!” said Tadamona insistently. “Tomorrow we shall match our magic. And I shall prove to you before you die how much you have lied.”
Billy waited for no more urging. He scrambled down off the ledge and sprinted for the entrance to the cavern, and as he dashed through and up the great passageway which led to the air he could hear Tadamona laughing, like a typhoon in the palms behind him. And the relief at being free was completely engulfed in the despair at his own helplessness.
The pale face of the moon was frightened behind the swift sweep of racing clouds. Shadows restively leaped into being and vanished along the rough trail, making the overwrought Billy feel that a thousand smaller demons lay in ambush at every turn. But when he had reached the whitely paved cart road which ended at his bungalow, the lessened strain gave him a moment’s clear thought, and he realized, with the suddenness of a bullet, that he had sold out the entire island for the sake of a few more hours of life. He had bought his momentary respite in terrible coin and unless he found that thousandth chance to avert this disaster, the lives of all were upon his head. He alone had goaded Tadamona into such vengeful folly.
Exhausted and shaking, he reached his verandah and fumbled his way through the dark front room to find a light for the lamp. The leaping yellow flame gave him spirit and returned courage. He even laughed a little and then checked it for fear it was hysteria in borning.
This was all, clearly, the most exquisite madness that could happen to a man. And before five minutes had passed, Billy Newman walked around the table and threw himself in a chair and said aloud, “What a silly dream that was.”
And, for the moment, it seemed very like a dream. He could almost recall waking up and walking in here for a calming cigarette. Nerves made nightmares and that was all there was to it. He poured himself a small drink, saying that he would take it off and then return to bed and calmer sleep. But with the glass halfway to his lips, it occurred to him that he should look in upon Osea. Maybe the boy would come out of the coma after all.
He got up and walked back to his bedroom, picking up the lamp on his way.
The leaping light played for a moment on the awful face of the boy. No, Osea was still on the threshold of death, beyond any help but God’s. Billy lowered the lamp, feeling very tired. The dream had not changed poor Osea’s condition.
Billy returned to the living room, so deep in sadness that he failed to realize that there was now no wind in the palms outside. He did not discover the lack for several minutes and when he did, he gave a start as though someone had made a great noise.
No wind. That was strange. At this time of year that wind never failed. And for months the clatter of fronds had been a ceaseless undertone to everything heard. It was so incredible that he went out on the verandah to find out whether he had suddenly become deaf. But no, the fronds hung in limp despair but dimly seen in moonlight which was now yellow and somehow oppressive. It was hot, too. So hot that Billy’s small mustache was thick with sweat, and his shirt was glued to his skin.
He started back into the house when the glint of a glass stopped him. He raised the lamp to look at the face of his barometer. Three times he looked away and looked back again to make certain he was seeing right. But in the last few minutes, the needle had fallen from thirty to twenty-seven and was still going down. Anxiously he stared at the small notches which were marked “Typhoon.”
A horrible suffocation took hold of him. He whirled and raced down the steps to stop, holding the lamp high over his head. The pale glow extended just far enough for him to see the great footprints on the beach—footprints ten feet long!
He had caught at a straw. He had made-believe it was a dream in the hope of brushing it all away. But here were the prints, there was the glass. Already Tadamona’s awful power had reached out to engulf the island.
Billy felt as though something was about to snap in his mind. Up until now, even when in the presence of the thing, he had half believed it to be a nightmare. But now he was awake and the entire thing was so.
He would get help. He would rouse the village. He would make them fight and destroy Tadamona forever. Somehow he would have to overcome their terror—for if he did not, dawn would find not a living soul on Kaisan.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 16